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The Rice Thresher
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College labs get faster, newer workstations by TOM BELANGER THRESHER STAFF Forty-eight new Sun Ultra 10 computers replaced the current Sun Ultra 1 computers around campus computer labs. The Office of New Media and Student Computing recently purchased the computers for $75,000. "What this gains us is application use. Ordinary programs should run much faster than before," Senior System Administrator Wyman Miles said. According to Miles, the Sun Ultra 10 computers have a processing speed of 440 megahertz and 128 megabytes of RAM, and will be able to support 24-bit video, enabling millions of colors on the new 19-inch monitors. Owlnet made the improvements to accompany the changes made to the network in February, when all computer labs were upgraded to 100-megabit Ethernet connections. "It's a ten-fold improvement in network performance and access to applications that students need to run," Miles said. Previously, all Rice computer labs had 10-megabit connections. According to Miles, the upgrade allows the possibility of a network connection 10 times faster than before. The Sun Ultra 10 computers are also capable of a 100-megabit connection, allowing users to exploit the changes made in February to Owlnet. The 48 Sun Ultra 10 computers replaced Sun Ultra 1 computers in Ryon Lab, in the two Abercrombie Labs and the Physics Lab. Each of the college labs received five old Sun Ultra 1 computers during midterm break. Owlnet Systems Administrator Ajeet Pai, a Will Rice College junior, said the purchase of the new Sun Ultra 10 computers is good because it allows Owlnet to move some of the more powerful computers to the colleges. He said this indicates Owlnet's strong commitment to computing in the colleges. The Sun Ultra 1 computers will replace most of the old computers currently in the colleges. Pai said that in the colleges there should be nothing lower than a SPARC 5, which runs at a processing speed a little slower than 90 megahertz. "The Sun Ultra 1 computers were top-of-the-line workstations about three years ago," Miles said. The computers previously in the colleges will either be given to other departments at Rice or will be "greensheeted," a process in which old equipment is sold to Rice departments or Rice students and faculty. New Media and Student Computing also purchased two new Sun Ultra Enterprise servers to replace "great-gray" and "great-horned." The new servers retained the old names. Now, great-gray and great-horned are the two fastest computer servers on Owlnet. According to Miles, these will "offer a real advantage to students doing anything that requires hard-core computer performance," such as Matlab or Mathematica. "We deliberately bought the most powerful workstations we could get from Sun with the expectation that, somewhere down the road, there would be a need for software applications that could take advantage of these machines," Miles said. Miles said these workstations will probably be in use for the next six years. - back - |
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