GEANT4


RD44 (GEANT4) is a world-wide collaboration of scientists to re-design a major package of CERN software for an object-oriented environment. The product of this development was continuously compared with the functionality provided by the old version of GEANT (3.21). This project is fundamentally testing the suitability of the object-oriented approach for simulation in HEP, where performance is a crucial issue.

RD44 has contributed to the production of a general framework for the LHC off-line software complementing other R&D projects (such as RD45).

The R&D project GEANT4 has been approved by the DRDC in November 1994 for one year; it was re-approved in November 1995 until early 1997; the GEANT4 project has been finally re-approved by the LHCC in summer 1997 until its completion by the end of 1998.

RD44 has reached completion at the end of 1998, meeting all milestones with the release of the first Geant4 production version, the first R&D version, and the full documentation deliverables.

From of the first of January 1999 the new MoU based Geant4 worldwide collaboration of experiments, laboratories, and institutes is in charge to manage the user support and production service for the Geant4 software.


Thursday 17 December 1998 GF