About the CAE Network

The CAE Network houses high-performance computers running Windows XP, Debian GNU/Linux, and Solaris in a centrally-located laboratory in Clement Hall 208. An adjoining room recycles computers from other campus labs to provide fast graphical access to the Debian and Solaris workstations for zero additional cost. The facility's switched gigabit ethernet network is firewalled from the rest of the campus, maximizing performance and security. Our location adjacent to the university's ITS machine room provides convenient high-speed network access to the rest of the campus. Our dedicated 9 terabyte file server backs up the lab's research daily (both in the lab and on faculty workstations), providing insurance against physical disaster and user error.

Installed software includes commercial programs for finite element analysis, solid modeling, and computational fluid dynamics. Programming tools for C, C++, Fortran (77, 90, and High-Performance), Java, and Python are available for users as well.

The CH208 lab is open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Students can store relevant books, papers, and other materials in the lab, and the wide range of students who populate the lab provides an opportunity for students to help each other on various aspects of their research. Instead of simply packing computers together into a room, we've also provided ample work spaces and areas for small meetings between students, faculty, and others. During the 2004-2005 academic year, nearly 70 graduate students working for 19 faculty in 5 departments used CAE Lab facilities in their research and graduate studies. Starting in the 2005 academic year, we've offered accounts to every currently-enrolled Engineering graduate student.

As a service to the rest of the university, we also house free software archives including:

• Debian GNU/Linux for Intel architecture computers, plus a mirror of Debian security updates for all architectures
  
• GNU source code from the Free Software Foundation, software which is increasingly becoming standard across all Unix-derived systems
  
• MikTeX, a LaTeX environment for Windows
  
• Xemacs, a full-featured text editor and programming environment for Windows and various Unix systems
  
• Cygwin, which creates a Unix-like environment on Windows computers