Resources
Computing Facilities
The Department of Computer Science is located in the Gould-Simpson Science Building where we maintain a variety of research and instructional facilities for CS student and faculty use.
There are seven CS computing laboratories within Gould-Simpson: A combined graphics and general instructional Lab in GS 930 (a 42-station Intel Pentium 4 based Windows & Linux PC facility with high resolution LCD monitors), a general Instructional Lab in GS 228 (a 56-station Intel P4 based Windows & Linux facility), and five Research Labs (in GS 732, 748, 756, 913, and 915). There are also project, conference, and discussion rooms scattered throughout our floors. The department maintains a three year replacement cycle on all instructional computing equipment.
Access to student computing labs is made available via electronic keycard seven days a week, 24 hours per day. All CS computing labs are located in the Gould-Simpson Science Building as are our faculty, lab support staff, and academic support services.
Students receive accounts on our main timesharing machine, Lectura (a multiprocessor, AMD Opteron based system running Linux) and on our Windows domain. All computers have access to gigabit ethernet and direct Internet connectivity. Two Network Appliance file servers with approximately 3 terabytes of available file storage provide shared data access across systems.
Preceptors hold consulting hours and demonstrations in the instructional labs. Department offices and instructional labs are equipped with redundant print stations and wireless LAN (802.11g at 54Mb). Students can use their personal laptops on our wireless LAN in lab or lecture hall. All CS students have access to our Commons Room in 737 with meeting area, library, and access to phone and Internet.
Our Research Labs offer a variety of equipment for use in student and faculty research projects. These labs contain Intel P4 based Windows/Linux OS systems, Apple Macintosh systems, specialized printers, graphics and visualization devices, and PC clusters. A 32-node Intel P4 cluster supports non-blocking, switched gigabit ethernet for network research. We also have a 10-node P4 cluster on switched gigabit ethernet for computation-intensive projects.
In an effort to harness unused CPU power from otherwise idle desktop workstations, the department offers CSGrid. Using the Wisconsin Condor software, workstations within the department are made available for remote batch computing. CSGrid is currently 50 nodes and growing. Spare computing cycles from the CSGrid have been used to solve complex computational problems of the Human Origins Genotyping Laboratory at The University of Arizona as well as in CS.
CS majors retain their accounts and access to lab facilities throughout their course of study. Graduating CS majors are offered continuing alumni accounts with email.
CS students, faculty, and staff also receive University computing and email accounts through the University's Center for Computing and Information Technology (CCIT). CCIT maintains the main campus communications backbone and our external Internet and Internet2 connectivity.
CCIT offers a variety of computing facilities which complement Computer Science resources. In addition to numerous student computing labs distributed across campus, CCIT's High Performance Computing Center (HPC) provides campus access to the Aura system—Hewlett Packard's High Performance Computing cluster. Aura is a 256 node cluster with 320GB memory and 12 terabytes of storage. The combined resources of the AURA cluster provide approximately 480GFLOPs of computer power as measured by the Linpack 1000x1000 benchmark.
CCIT's HPC Center also runs a 64 processor Beowulf Linux cluster using AMD 2000MP+ processors with 2 GB memory and 2 GB of swap space per compute node.
For individuals requiring more computing power than the CSGrid provides, CCIT's HPC Center sponsors their own grid computing initiative, UAGrid, using the Condor software. UAGrid is designed to make available spare CPU cycles University-wide as an alternate computing resource. There are currently 100 nodes across campus made available in this way.
Finally, CCIT provides a state of the art Scientific Visualization Lab, AZ-LIVE, for campus use. AZ-LIVE is a room where university researchers, faculty, and students can be immersed in a three dimensional, computer generated world. The environment combines 3D computer graphics, stereoscopic projection technology, acoustical tracking devices, and four-channel audio to create the illusion of being present in a virtual world.
Last updated Monday, 07-Jan-2008 09:32:28 MST
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