UKQCD software for lattice quantum chromodynamics

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the quantum field theory of the strong nuclear interaction and it explains how quarks and gluons are bound together to make more familiar objects such as the proton and neutron, which form the nuclei of atoms. UKQCD is a collaboration of eight UK universities that have come together to obtain and pool sufficient resources, both computational and manpower, to perform lattice QCD calculations. This paper explains how UKQCD uses and develops this software, how performance critical kernels for diverse architectures such as quantum chromodynamics-on-a-chip, BlueGene and XT4 are developed and employed and how UKQCD collaborates both internally and externally, with, for instance, the US SciDAC lattice QCD community.