Friday the 13th brought good fortune to Bill Matthaeus of the Bartol Research Institute at UD. June 13 is when Matthaeus and four colleagues received $411,904 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to completely modernize the Bartol computing facility within Sharp Laboratory.
The funds, awarded through the NSF's Academic Research Infrastructure program, will supplement $100,078 received by Bartol on Oct. 28, 1996Ðanother day Matthaeus won't soon forget. "It was one day and twelve years after the very first computing system was installed at Bartol, on Oct. 27, 1984," he said, "and that was the day my oldest son was born."
All these fortuitous events promise to catapult the Bartol Research Institute "into the big leagues of number crunching," Matthaeus said. "We're going to have a showpiece system. It will help us attract additional grants and students, and it will enhance the educational experience we can provide."
Over the next three years, Matthaeus said, the NSF awards will make it possible to completely upgrade the Bartol computing facility, including its main computers and the supporting communications, environmental and power control systems. The first step, already under way, is to replace an existing single-Ethernet system--essentially a thick wire threaded from point to point throughout Sharp LabÐwith a series of "switch-based hubs" located inside networking closets on each floor of the building. Bartol's network capacity will jump from 10 million bits of information per second on a single "channel" to several hundred million per second, collectively, over a number of independent Ethernet channels, Matthaeus said.
A single frayed wire or loose connector within the current system can quickly cause a systemwide failure, he explained. And, locating the site of the failure can be a time-consuming exercise. The new configuration will be far more reliable, because information will travel from the hub to an end user. "We're going to be very much more bullet-proof to failuresÐincluding disk, power and system failures," Matthaeus said.
At the heart of the new system will be a pair of multi-processing servers, each equipped with up to four 466-megahertz Alpha central processing units (CPUs) provided by the Digital Equipment Corp. and its affiliate, Nexgen Technologies Inc. of Willow Grove, Pa. The system initially will provide 1.5 gigabytes of random access memory, connected to a parallel disk controller. Students using the new system will therefore be better equipped to write parallel algorithmsÐa key computing technology. The NSF awards also will cover the cost of improved fire protection and air-conditioning systems.
Advanced computing technologies are crucial for researchers like Bartol President Norman F. Ness, who supervises the analysis of magnetic field data collected by twin Voyager satellites. Since 1977, the satellites have collected billions of data samples measuring the magnetic fields in interplanetary space, from Earth to far beyond Pluto's orbit, and during the close encounters with the four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Analyzing the data requires massive computing and storage capacity. At present, Ness noted, the radio signals from the Voyager satellites take over seven and nine hours each to reach Earth as they exit the solar system. They soon will be the most distant objects ever launched.
Bartol researchers also use neutron monitoring devices to investigate complex space phenomena involving the motions of conducting gases and magnetic fields, as well as high-energy charged particles, or cosmic rays. Studies of solar wind, for example, may lead to techniques for forecasting "space weather," which affects electrical power transmission on Earth, the functioning and survival of communications satellites and space exploration. To create theoretical models of solar wind phenomena, Matthaeus and his colleagues must analyze huge amounts of data produced by computer simulations. These theoretical models, and the analysis of spacecraft data, will be greatly enhanced by the computing, storage, memory and networking improvements made possible by the NSF awards, Matthaeus said.
Named in honor of the late Henry W. Bartol, the Bartol Research Institute is a nonprofit research organization that jointly conducts a graduate program with UD's Department of Physics and Astrophysics. Along with Matthaeus, the NSF grants were awarded to Bartol researchers Jacques L'Heurex, David Seckel, Chang-Hua Tsao and Charles W. Smith.
Ginger Pinholster