Departmental Computing Facilities

The department makes use of a mix of computing platforms, with about three-quarters of our research and instructional computing taking place on Microsoft's Windows 2000/XP operating system and Intel Architecture processors and the remaining quarter on Red Hat Linux desktop and Red Hat Linux and Sun Solaris back-end servers. We have benefited greatly over the last year from equipment donations from Intel, Hewlett Packard, and Microsoft.

In the area of improved and upgraded infrastructure, during the past year, we:

· Created a new public 20-node Linux computation cluster, consisting of Dell 1650 systems with dual 1.13GHz Pentium III processors and 1GB memory.
· Upgraded approximately 170 systems in the Undergraduate Teaching Lab and Master of Engineering lab to Windows XP Professional and Visual Studio.Net.
· Upgraded the department's core servers to Gigabit Ethernet.
· Provided most Microsoft OS and development software for free use by CS community members on personal and departmental systems through the Microsoft MSDNAA program.

The department has over 1000 computers ranging from desktops to high-end parallel processing servers, over five terabytes of on-line disk storage, and a backbone network based on switched Gigabit Ethernet.

The department has a full-time computing facilities staff of fifteen. Dean Krafft serves as director, with programming support provided by Dora Abdullah, Jennifer Holleran, Dean Eckstrom, Doug Flanagan, Bill Holmes, Orlando Johnson, and Larry Parmelee; web development provided by Una Moneypenny; hardware support by John Finley and Bruce Boda; user consulting support by Joshua Gerner, Joseph McGuire, and Eric Brinkman; and systems administration by Cay Wilson. The staff provides full support for all the operating systems and standard software on our major computing platforms.

In addition to the resources directly owned and operated by the department, computer science students and researchers have access to a number of university facilities. The university provides extensive campus-wide networking, based on the TCP/IP protocols and implemented through a switched Gigabit Ethernet backbone connecting organizational Ethernets. National and international access is provided by three OC3 connections to the global Internet. High-speed community access is available through Time-Warner's RoadRunner cable modem system and several DSL providers.

The department operates an undergraduate teaching laboratory of 30 Intel-donated 450MHz Pentium III systems, 30 Intel-donated 866MHz Pentium III systems, 25 Intel-donated 1.5GHz Pentium 4 systems, and 15 Microsoft-donated 1.8GHz Pentium 4 systems, all running Microsoft's Windows XP Professional. This lab provides support for a wide range of upper-level undergraduate courses and individual research projects. There is also a separate graphics teaching laboratory with 25 HP Visualize fx6+ workstations. Finally, through the Cornell Theory Center and the Program in Computer Graphics, computer science researchers have access to a wide range of advanced parallel processing and supercomputer systems as well as advanced graphics and visualization systems.

The following list includes major computing equipment in the Computer Science Department owned either by Cornell or by the Federal government.
Desktop Machines

10 Sun SunRay 214 Intel Pentium II Desktop PC
19 SUN UltraSparc 10 289 Intel Pentium III Desktop PC
4 SUN UltraSparc 5 187 Intel Pentium 4 Desktop PC
2 SUN Sunblade 100 5 Intel Celeron Desktop PC
7 Apple G3/G4 PowerBook 39 Intel Pentium II Laptop PC
3 Apple G3/G4 workstation 71 Intel Pentium III Laptop PC
251 HP VisualizeX 600MHz PIIISGI O2 3120 Intel Pentium 4 Laptop PCIntel Celeron Laptop PC

Back-end Resources

5 Terabytes server-based on-line file storage 1 45-node Linux PIII dual-proc. cluster
9 Sun Ultra Enterprise 420/450 quad-processor servers 109 Dell dual-processor Pentium III servers
2 SUN Ultra Enterprise 250 dual-processor servers 5 Dell quad-processor Pentium III servers
8 SUN Sunfire 280R quad-processor servers 3 Intel quad-processor Pentium II servers
1 3.8TB SUN tape library 4 Dell 8-way Pentium III servers
1 12-node AMD 1.2GHzAthlon Beowulf cluster 15 Intel Pentium III servers

Other Hardware

10 Color Laser Printers 2 Cisco Catalyst 5000/5500 Fast Ethernet switches
57 B&W Laser Printers (HP/ Lexmark) 34 Cisco Catalyst 29xx Fast Ethernet switches
2 HP DesignJet 2500 poster printers 1 Cisco Catalyst 6509 Gigabit Ethernet switch
70 HP Jornada 720 PocketPC handhelds 7 Cisco Catalyst 1900 10/100 Ethernet switches