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Project Roadmap


The project roadmap is composed of phases focusing on the evolution of the MAD project (see overview), including the legacy MAD-X and the 'next generation' MAD. The aim of this evolution is fourfold: (i) allow the project to get rid of problems strictly related to computer science (e.g. parser crashes, language inconsistencies, memory leaks, data corruption, etc...) as well as its portability and its extensibility, (ii) improve the robustness and debugging facilities to reduce drastically the resource consumed by maintenance, (iii) increase significantly its flexibility and its computational power by using better available technologies (general purpose language, 64-bit support, vectorization, parallelization, JIT compiler), and (iv) restore the cohesion and the consistency of the physics and provide forefront methods and models to the community. The MAD team is composed of physicists, hence priority will be given to the computational physics aspects.


MAD-X development

MAD-X development is performed by a small team and collaborators contributors and hence require some tradeoff and priorities in the time sharing. Maintenance and support focus only on users feedback (bug reports) to provide correction to the legacy code. Extensions focus only on users and projects requirements (e.g. HL-LHC and FCC specifications) to provide improvement to the legacy code.

MAD 'Next Generation' development

MAD-NG development (started in 2016) is performed in parallel to the MAD-X maintenance, support and extensions, and involves only part time of one team member. Hence the progress of the project strongly depends on the activity on MAD-X.