Professor John Connolly
Modern, high-speed computers of all varieties have become an indispensable component of research in physics and astronomy in both theoretical and experimental programs. Computational equipment within the Department of Physics and Astronomy includes a DEC Alpha/AXP 3000/600 server (with 128 Mb of RAM) running OSF1 (unix), a workstation cluster running VAX/VMS, another running VAX/Ultrix, an HP-UX 9000/710 (unix), several Sun workstations, and numerous small personal computers and X-terminals. Networks within the Department and the University link these machines both locally and externally with several national and global computer networks.
The University's IBM mainframe system for the early 1990's consists of an IBM ES 3090-600J/VF, configured with 6 processors and 6 vector facilities, 512 megabytes of processor memory, 1 gigabyte of extended storage and 235 gigabytes of high-speed disk storage.
For more numerically intense applications, the Convex CS210 with 256 Mb memory running unix serves as the front end of a cluster of 8 HP735's with a total of 1.6 Gb memory, 9.6 Gb local disk storage and 560 Gb of mass storage.
The Sequent S81 and the Intel Hypercube are distributed memory parallel machines for use in developing massively-parallel code, and for testing algorithms. The University is aggressively pursuing the acquisition of a massively parallel computer which should be on site by the mid 1990's.
The University of Kentucky Center for Computational Sciences has become established as the major center for computational activity at the University of Kentucky. It currently serves to: encourage new and innovative uses of computers; provide an optimum environment for training, and for development of programs; support interdisciplinary projects where the computational expertise of one discipline can be transferred to another; initiate collaborations with outside research through the support of visitors, seminars, workshops and conferences; test state-of-the-art hardware and software; and serve as the principal liaison between the researchers and the Computing Center.
The most important output of the Center is of course the science and engineering research pursued through the use of the University's computational resources. The Center supports many graduate students, post-doctoral associates, and visiting scientists in collaboration with several faculty members.
The scope of the projects directly supported by the Center spans nearly the entire range of academic activities at the University. These include programs in: mathematical and physical sciences, engineering, medical applications, social sciences and business, and energy and the environment. For example, in mathematical sciences there are several projects in numerical analysis and computer science involved with the development and optimization of techniques for solving differential equations and pattern recognition problems. In physics, there are several projects in quantum chromodynamics, the theory of how elementary particles form and interact. There are also projects in nuclear physics, atomic physics and superconductivity. In astronomy, the Center supports research in the dynamics of the solar system, stars, interstellar masers and the clustering of galaxies.
In order to develop the Center as a major contributor to computational science, a program has been instituted to attract top experts through the awards of Special Professorships in Computational Science. These are joint appointments between the Center and departments in a number of disciplines.
The Center also is involved with other interdisciplinary efforts at the University of Kentucky which require a substantial amount of computational effort. A prime example of this is the Advanced Science and Technology Commercialization Center (ASTeCC) funded by the US Department of Commerce. This project focuses on research areas which have industrial potential. The Center for Computational Sciences is a major part of the ASTeCC project in collaboration with the Robotics Center, the Computer Science Department and an interdisciplinary effort in Materials Sciences. The latter involves the Physics Department as well.
As part of its aim to build an optimum, user-friendly environment for the pursuit of computational research, the Center for Computational Sciences has initiated a graphics workstation evaluation project. Recent advances in technology have produced on the market several different species of powerful workstations which are rapidly becoming the principal devices through which researchers interact with world-wide computational resources. The Center has installed several varieties of workstations, terminals and personal computers connected to a hierarchy of networks---local, campus, national and international--- in order to allow access for researchers to assess the feasibility of making significant and productive scientific advances.