| Resources for Research |
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Computers and advanced visualization systems are becoming increasingly fundamental to the advancement of science and engineering, complementing and in some cases substituting for conventional methods of theory and experiment.
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| Advanced Computing Facilities | In the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne, we provide access to world-class supercomputing resources (e.g., our Chiba City Linux cluster) integrated with advanced visualization and support for wide area real-time collaborations. These resources are intended to enable a new generation of computational science applications that couple massive computation with immersive visualization. |
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| Distributed Terascale Facility | Argonne, together with three other institutions, is developing the world's largest distributed computing infrastructure devoted to scientific research. The DTF will provide more than 13.6 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) of computing power. |
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| Divisional Computing Resources | The division computing environment is based on a network of diverse workstations (including SPARCstations, SGI workstations, and IBM RISC workstations); PCs for administrative and database purposes; portable computing devices (laptops); home computing devices; and local area network communications gear (including ISDN). |
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| Futures Laboratory | The Futures Lab provides state-of-the-art experimental facility for developing and prototyping virtual reality and collaboration experiments. Facilities include a CAVE immersive VR environment linked to a supercomputer backend for complex calculations; several smaller ImmersaDesks; an Active Mural Wall; parallel computers with a large amount of disk space for prototyping parallel multimedia servers; PowerPC workstations with audio and video support; and video cameras, microphones and speakers, audio amplifiers, scan converters,active whiteboards, video and audio switches and mixers, large-screen monitors, Hi8 and VHS editing facilities, and state-of-the-art advanced networking. |
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| Distributed Systems Laboratory | Networked "virtual supercomputers," composed dynamically from diverse components, promise to become increasing important in scientific problem solving.The DSL is dedicated to making distributed supercomputing systems broadly accessible for computational science and engineering. The DSL equipment includes parallel computers, high-performance workstations, large databases, and VR devices. Two distributed supercomputing configurations that couple these resources are being tested: one involving local networking over fast Ethernet and ATM, the other involving wide-area networking via the ESSnet on an OC-3 speed network. |
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| Laboratory for Advanced Numerical Software | Researchers in the Laboratory for Advanced Numerical Software (LANS) conduct basic and applied research leading to new algorithms and software that fully exploit high-performance computers. We envision that this new technology will lay the groundwork for new scientific insights and approaches for solving challenging problems in science and engineering. |
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| Optimization Technology Center | Designed to enable users to solve optimization problems easily and automatically over the Internet, the OTC includes state-of-the-art optimization solvers (with user guides), a Web browser, a submission tool (a high-speed socket-based interface for Unix workstations), and an interface with automatic differentiation tools. The user simply submits a problem specification; the NEOS Server provides the solution, as well as derivatives and sparsity patterns for nonlinear problems. The OTC is a collaborative effort of Argonne and Northwestern University seeking to make potential users in industry, government, and academia aware
of how optimization techniques can aid their work. |
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| Regional Climate Center | The potential impacts of global climate change have long been investigated based on the results of climate simulations using global climate models with typical model resolutions of the order of hundreds of kilometers. However, the assessment of the impacts of climate change at the regional and local scales requires predictions of climate change at the 1-10 kilometer scale. Model predictions from global climate models with such high resolutions are not likely to become widely available in the near future. What is needed, therefore, is research that centers on new techniques to downscale global climate model output to the regional scale. To this end, we have established at Argonne a Regional Climate Center, with a focus on the Midwest and the Great Plains. |
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| Frequently Asked Questions | MCS maintains a list of FAQs -- and answers! -- about computer architecture, Web use, slide production, mail systems, and printers. |
