High Performance Computing

OSCAR Core Computing Platform:

166-node Linux cluster, CCV's primary HPC cluster with 14 teraflop/s peak performance. machine room

Shanghai Cluster:

7-node large SMP cluster with four quad-core AMD Opteron Shaghai-series processors, 64/128GB of RAM and local disk. Optimized for remote visualization projects.

Visualization

The Cave:

CCV's four wall virtual 3D environment custom-built by TAN. LCD-shutter glasses provide stereo depth-perception, and a variety of Intersense and Polhemus tracking devices allow software to track the position of a user's hand, head, wand, etc. The Cave also has a multi-speaker sound system that provides positional audio.

Display Walls:

CCV installs 3D display units for departments throughout the university. 3D visualization can provide inspiration and insight into the extremely large data sets collected by researchers.

Email Sharon King for details

Storage

Clustered Storage Platform:

A high-performance parallel disk storage subsystem using IBM’s GPFS parallel filesystem, part of the core HPC platform (Oscar). Allows CCV to offer 256 Gigabytes for research data storage to each faculty member without service fees.

Digital Dropbox:

Have you ever wanted to share a large file with your colleagues, only to find that e-mail won’t let you due to its size or file type? The Dropbox provides temporary web based storage for sharing mid to large data files of any type; it can also be used to allow collaborators outside Brown upload their files.

Backup and Archival:

CCV uses TSM and automated tape libraries for backups and archival. The TSM system has been used primarily for backup up CCV systems; however, the high capacity of the tape libraries has allowed limited expansion to provide backup services for research data systems in other departments.

Hosting

Virtual Linux Hosting:

CCV now offers a service where we set up and run virtual Linux servers based on the Xen hypervisor. We will help to install and configure software needs, establish access protocols, and discuss security concerns. We will particularly focus on SQL databases.

Service Overview

Physical Server Hosting:

Contingent on space, power and cooling capacity, CCV will provide hosting and systems management services for Linux servers running the RedHat or CentOS operating systems. Unless there are special requirements dictating the use of physical hardware, virtual servers are strongly recommended.

Service Overview

Other Services

Consulting:

The staff of CCV is happy to offer, at no cost, limited advice and assistance in connection with hardware and software requirements as part of proposal planning and preparation.

Dedicated CCV staff time for significant software and hardware development, maintenance and upgrade efforts and other activities of a similar nature can be purchased. We can also provide technical assistance for hardware or software issues on installations without a current CCV service contract or agreement.

Email Sharon King for details

Linux@Brown:

Linux@BROWN is an effort by CCV to establish a repository and informal support for a select set of Linux distributions, third party applications and their configuration for use at Brown. We also mirror the CentOS and Fedora distributions for fast local campus access.

Funding Opportunities:

The Director of CCV has, at his discretion, a small research seed fund to directly support and enable the use of CCV facilities. The purpose of the seed fund is to offset the initial cost of using the CCV facilities and enable initial exploratory work and development of efforts utilizing CCV facilities.

Seed Funding Details

Sections

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