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Legion serves
as a middleware metacomputing infrastructure that allows our machines
to be more easily used by remote users, and allows local researchers
to have access to a wider range of more powerful computing resources
than would otherwise be possible. Locally, research led by Dr.Michael
Lewis and Dr.Madhusudhan
Govindaraju has been conducted on the Legion system itself, including
extensions and improvements to the dynamically configurable distributed
 object
model, which allows programmers to evolve their software objects on
the fly. Legion, running over Internet2, is also being used in the Grid
computing course.
July 1, 2001
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Using
High Bandwidth for Data Transfer, Analysis, and Collaboration
Dr. Francis
Wu, his student Mr. Song, and the Chinese Seismological Bureau collaborated
on gathering information at the site of a very young volcano in Northeast
China, bordering on North Korea. The study was supported by the US Department
of Energy and IRIS loaned equipment for the study. IRIS is the Incorporated
Research Institutions for Seismology, a university research consortium
supported by the NSF and other federal agencies. The data amounted to
over 20 gigabytes. Intermet2 was used to transfer some of the raw data
to the IRIS data repository where it was sorted and stored in a database.
Internet2 was further used for retrieving the data by different combinations
of criteria. The information was used for determining the structure
of the volcano on the inside as well as the the thickness of the earth's
crust over the volcano.
In
the last year Dr. Wu also used the Internet2 extensively for cooperative
seismology research with colleagues in the University of Colorado
and US Geological Survey in Denver. He reports, "Although in this
work we did not transmit a large amount of data every time - usually
10's of MB, but we did it a lot. The speed we were able to [achieve]
is often in the range of about 50-100 kb/sec. It was consistently
in this range, so we feel that we know what to expect and we can
time our responses quite closely to what we need from each other."
July 1, 2001
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Dr.
Jeff Barker has been using Internet2's high bandwidth to receive
results of an application modeling earthquake ground motion. The
study was run at several supercomputing centers, most recently
being the University of Michigan. Funded by the National Science
Foundation and the Department of Energy, Dr. Barker, his student
Kyong Tae-Kim, and Dr. Francisco Sanchez-Sesma wrote a program
that modeled three dimensional seismic wave propagation in sedimentary
basins. Sedimentary basins are former lakebeds, and several large
cities including Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Caracas are built
on top of sedimentary basins. The application is used to predict
how the ground will respond to an earthquake, including the frequency
and direction of waves at different points in the basin. It can
be used to test many scenarios and predict the probability of
seismic risk. Modeling in three dimensions was achieved by inversion
of a large matrix, using preconditioning and Conjugate Gradient
methods on a parallel supercomputer. Future plans include modeling
motion at the edges of the basin where the lakebed meets more
solid ground and running the program in the Legion grid computing
environment.
Sept. 4, 2001
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Electronics
Packaging Education Over Internet2
The Integrated
Electronics Engineering Center at Binghamton University, under
the direction of Dr.
Baghat Sammakia, will soon be bringing the latest electronics
packaging research and education to a broader audience using Internet2.
The IEEC is sponsored by the NSF, DARPA, DOE, and NIST as well
as its industrial partners*. It has three goals: research in electronics
packaging, economic development, and education.
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Electronic packaging is all the parts of a computer or similar
device, excluding the silicon chips. This includes the housing,
wiring, even the solder by which parts are attached. The goal
of electronics packaging design is to make these parts strong,
reliable, defect free, and also environmentally friendly. Electronics
packaging education involves a variety of disciplines including
physics and chemistry, plus industrial, electrical and mechanical
engineering.
With the help of REU undergraduate research assistant David Schatten,
Dr. Sammakia will be building a database of multimedia course
modules for electronics packaging instruction. The modules will
include PowerPoint slides and video. More information can be found
on the Streaming Media page. The
program is being developed jointly with Georgia Tech and both
universities will be contributing. Other collaborators at Binghamton
University include Dr. H. Kroger (EE), Dr. E. Cotts (Physics),
Dr. W. Jones(Chemistry), Dr. J. Pitarresi (ME), and Dr. G. Lehman(ME).
* IBM, Lockheed Martin, GE, BAE System Controls, International
Flex Technologies, Matco, and Universal Instruments
Oct. 24, 2001
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| Remote
Visualization |
| Dr. Kanad Ghose and his student Alisa
Neeman are working on a project to interactively view three dimensional
scientific datasets over the internet2. More information can be
found here. |
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