Departmental Computing

The Department of Geological Sciences operates a centralized computational facility that supports a broad range of disciplines and research efforts. The facility provides access to a moderate-power compute server, a central terabyte mass storage system and file server, a high speed intradepartmental network, data archiving and support of desktop/laptop computers.

The compute server is comprised of 10 Xserve Quad Xeons (40 CPUs) for numerical analyses. Data is stored on an Apple Xserve RAID and served by a separate Xserve Quad Xeon. Numerous software applications and licenses are also accessible via the facility.

The centralized facility is uniting a wider range of researchers within a common computing environment, thereby facilitating increased synergy and more closely coupled research amongst faculty doing related work, more efficient training of our M.Sc. and Ph.D. students, and increased power and sophistication of numerical analyses. A dedicated systems administrator, supported by departmental funds and users fees, maintains the computational facility.