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[previous article] [next article]As part of a University initiative, the School of Civil Engineering received $75,000 in funding for the upgrade of the computing resources within the School. After providing an additional $25,000, the School was able to upgrade to a much more current computing environment.
About half of the funding was used to purchase a new UNIX server to provide an additional computational resource within the School. The new machine, a Sun Enterprise Ultra 450 server, is equipped with 30GB of fast-wide SCSI disk space, a gigabyte of memory, and 4 300MHz Ultrasparc-II processors. The machine is intended to be used for large computational processes and programs such as Matlab, Abaqus, Patran, and ArcInfo. Disk space provided as an area for research data will also be moved from the current server, CE, to the new server, PYRAMID. General file service, web service, and e-mail service will remain on CE. The new server will become fully available at the start of the summer session.
The new E450 (PYRAMID) is 7.5 times faster than CE. The new Ultra1 machines are 25 times faster than the old SPARC 1s and are 6.5 times faster than the existing SPARC 5s
The remainder of the funding was used to purchase 9 new UNIX workstations for the Sun lab located in CIVL 1212. Each machine, a Sun Ultra 170E workstation, is equipped with a single 167MHz Ultrasparc-I processor, a 20" color monitor, a 2.1GB fast-wide SCSI disk, 128MB of memory, and a 24-bit color graphics card. The machines replaced the outdated SPARC-1 machines which were only capable of black and white graphics. The new workstations will be used for short computational jobs which will be run on the local workstation and will provide a much faster general computing environment.
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