CNS RSG Home > General Overview Information

General Information:

 Facility and Service Introduction:

The CNS Research Support group at the University of Alberta would like to welcome all new researchers to both the MACI facilities, and the general access computational facilities; and to provide an introduction to some of the services that are provided by our team to assist researchers with their high performance computing needs:

MACI's High Performance Computers:

We are part of the MACI (Multimedia Advanced Computational Infrastructure) collaborative. MACI members have pooled their resources to provide a top-rank research computing facility. More information is available at: www.ualberta.ca/CNS/RESEARCH/MACI

General Access Research Resources at CNS:

Linux Clusters: While not part of the MACI endowment, the CNS Linux clusters can provide a powerful solution to many kinds of high performance computing needs. The perfect place to run fast scalar jobs or parallel jobs that don't require the large shared memory space provided on the MACI SGI machines. More information about the CNS clusters can be found at: www.ualberta.ca/CNS/RESEARCH/LinuxClusters

Numerical and Statistical Servers: Another computing solution, that is open to all researchers at the U of A, are our IBM RS/6000 based numerical and statistical servers. These machines are geared towards interactive use and boast a wide variety of popular software packages. For more information, please visit:
www.ualberta.ca/CNS/RESEARCH/NumStatsServers/index.html

HP Plotters: Need a poster for a conference? CNS has three HP DesignJet large format plotters to create posters on plain or semi-gloss paper. Lamination services also available. Find out more at: www.ualberta.ca/CNS/PLOTTER

3D Printer: The 3D-Printer (which will produce high quality 3D solid models), is in production. More information can be found at our local 3D-Printer web page, or contact us directly: 3dprinter@mailman.srv.ualberta.ca

 Services:

Code Parallelization & Optimization: We have 2 full time staff and one part time student available to help researchers get the best performance out of their code, and the best utilization from the MACI facilities. If you require assistance porting your code to run on the SGI complex, parallelizing your code, or if you just want to learn more about the tools we have to improve code performance, please contact our analysts at: research.support@ualberta.ca

Visualization: The Visualization Group at the University of Alberta works within the Research Support Group of Computing and Network Services; and has three full time staff members available to work on scientific visualization projects. The goal is to provide tools and techniques needed by researchers that will enable them to represent their digital data visually -- either to further understand their research results, or to display the research results at conferences or in publications. If you are looking for a visual way to communicate your data, perhaps an illustration for a publication or an animation for a conference talk, please e-mail our analysts at: research.support@ualberta.ca

 The Grid Room Project (DRAFT):

WestGrid will enable researchers in Western Canada to utilize computing resources in distant locations as easily as they do their local computers. The technology which will permit easy access to these widely distributed resources can also be used to enable collaboration between groups of distant researchers. The difficulty with collaboration at a distance is that the participants at different locations have not been able to examine data, models and views of materials in the same way at the various locations. The AccessGrid (AG) Room (www.AccessGrid.org) is an attempt to use the Grid infrastructure to create an environment at each node of the collaborative session where the participants can share views of data, perhaps through a digital 3D model, which can be examined at all nodes while discussion can continue between researchers at all nodes. This ability to have all participants in a session experience the data in the same way at all nodes at the same time has been technically impossible until now.

Room 315 of the General Services Building currently contains a variety of multimedia equipment and is wired to a highspeed network. The building also contains a computing complex which will house the University of Alberta's WestGrid supercomputers so that wiring the Grid Room to the grid is already done. Upgrading GSB 315 to the specifications of an AccessGrid Room will be much less costly than creating an AG Room from scratch at another site. In addition, having the AG Room close the the actual users and support staff will ensure that the room is maintained and utilized to its full potential. Finally, all departments in the University are pressed for usable space so it is very difficult to find a room to allocate for this purpose. Since GSB 315 is already used for multimedia purposes, CNS will be happy to have the room's usage possibilities extended to enable group to group collaboration.

In summary, the technology which enables the Grid promises to enhance long distance collaboration to the point where researchers need not travel long distances to discuss complex data and share the same views and experiences of that data. Enabling this sort of interaction can allow users to tap into the knowledge and perspectives of a diverse group of potential collaborators that would have been difficult or impossible to achieve without this technology.

For More Information:

If you would like to inquire more about our services or require assistance, please feel free to e-mail the team at: research.support@ualberta.ca

Updated: April 7, 2003.

 List of Research Support Group - Related Dispatch Articles:

The Dispatch: Computing and Network Services publishes the Dispatch every two months (except July/August). Copies are available for University of Alberta faculty and staff through campus mail and for other institutions via mailed subscription. Students and members of the public are encouraged to pick up their copies at the Help Desk, 302 General Services Building. The Dispatch is also available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ualberta.ca/CNS/dispatch.html

LAST MACI Upgrade
by Sean Hartigan.
See page 4 in the March/April 2002 Dispatch (5.4MB PDF)

The complete list is available in a separate file: Related Dispatch Articles

Updated: May, 2002.

 List of Related Events:

The Research Support Group, and CNS, understands the importance of various forms of outreach. This includes all levels of participation in events such as Conferences, Symposiums, trade booths and courses.

Up Coming Events:

Events Across Canada - Check the c3.ca Web Site:

Have a look at the c3 web site for information on various High Performance Computing conferences, courses and workshops: www.c3.ca

The archive list of events that we have participated in is available in a separate file: Related Events List

Updated: June 2, 2003.

 Contacts:

Part of Computing and Network Services the Research Support Group is located on the first floor of the General Services Building on the University of Alberta Campus.

Group Members (in alphabetical order):

Masao Fujinaga, Programmer/Analyst: Masao has recently joined the research support group as a programmer/analyst. He has a Ph. D. in Biochemistry from the University of Alberta. Since the 80's, he has used various vector and parallel machines for work in the fields of macromolecular crystallography and computational chemistry. In the last few years, he has been using the linux cluster, rerack, for a crystallographic application using genetic algorithm with PVM.

Jon Johansson, Programmer/Analyst: Jon Johansson has recently joined the Research Support group of CNS. He is specializing in visualization and will be assisting researchers with conversion and preparation of data for interpretation and presentation. Jon received a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 1993 from the University of Alberta. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow and research associate for five years at the University of Alberta, the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

Marc La France, Systems Analyst: Marc La France joined the Research Support group of CNS in 1995, however until recently his primary responsibility was the main system administrator for the MVS system. His new responsibilities include all aspects of our scheduling software (PBS, PBS pro and Maui) development and maintenance. Marc received his computing science degree from University of Ottawa. Marc joined CNS in 1980. Marc's current duties also include our local linux cluster and he is an XFree86 Core Team member (ATI driver and X server internals).

Nadine Leenders, Systems Analyst: Nadine joined CNS in 1982 as part of the Graphics support group. Her focus is now on system administration and plotting support. Nadine received a B.Sc. in Computing Science in 1979 from the University of Alberta and has been working on various aspects of graphics over the years. Recently she has been focusing on the installation and system administration duties for the SGI's and Linux clusters.

Waldemar Lysz, Systems Analyst: Wally joined the University of Alberta in 1986 and has worked with a wide range of computing platforms, from desk-tops to mainframes as well as various high performance computing systems. He became part of the Research Support Group in 1995 as system administrator for the IBM SP2. With the acquisition of the Origin complex his current forces is on IRIX system and network administration, but he also looks after our numerical, statistical and license servers.

Ron Senda, Group Leader: Ron came to the University in 1971, joined CNS in 1976 and has been involved in many aspects of client support since that time. Ron received his B.Sc. from the University of Lethbridge, and his MSc and MBA from the University of Alberta. Ron has been the team leader of the Research Support group for the past six years, and he is one of the founding members of the team that put MACI together. Ron's activities over the past few years have included the promotion of High Performance Computing locally and nationally.

Martin Snajdr, MACI Analyst: Martin has been working part time with the research support group as a MACI analyst for over a year. He is a 3rd year Ph.D. student with the department of Physics. His primary focus is parallelization and code tuning of HPC applications.

Edmund Sumbar, Programmer/Analyst: Edmund recently joined the research support group as a programmer/analyst concentrating on code tuning, performance benchmarking, and debugging. He has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta; and he lives by the motto "if you can't be with the one you love...try programming in fortran".

Denise Thornton, Programmer/Analyst: Denise joined CNS in 1981 as part of the Numerical Computing support group. Her focus is now on visualization tools and techniques and works part-time in the Research Support Group. Denise received a B.Sc. in Computing Science in 1980 from the University of Alberta and has been working on various aspects of high performance computing since that time.

Chris Want, Programmer/Analyst: Chris joined CNS as programmer/analyst/operator in the Optical Mark Reading area in 1997 and has recently moved to the Research Support group of CNS. Chris's expertise is on the technically demanding server side of multimedia. Chris received his MSc in Mathematics in 1995 from the University of Alberta.

Norris Weimer, Programmer/Analyst: Norris joined CNS in 1980 as part of the Statistical Consulting group and his current focus is now the investigation of Grid technologies. Norris has a MSc in Statistics from the University of of Alberta.

Please direct ALL questions about Research Computing to: Research.Support@Ualberta.ca

Updated: March 19, 2002.