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Facilities

Network Infrastructure and Servers

The Department of Computer Science is fully independent, with its own email and printing facilities and a dedicated wireless network. The network infrastructure and the servers in the data center were recently upgraded. The department network is now powered by thirteen Cisco 3750 series gigabit switches, with fifteen state-of-the-art servers running web, E-mail, database, file, application, and directory services. The servers have 2 to 4 Sparc IIIi or AMD Opteron dual core processors, 8 to 32 gigabytes of RAM and over 6TB of storage space.

The latest addition to the computing power is a 32 node Beowulf cluster (in addition to the front end). Each node has dual AMD Opteron 2.4 gigahertz processors with 4 gigabytes of RAM and 73GB, 10,000 RPM ULTRA320 SCSI hard disks. The cluster network is gigabit and the nodes share a 1.8TB disk array. The department is expecting a 47+TB disk array to be shared with the LONI group. This disk array is a result of a joint research venture known as PETASHARE between the department and four other universities (LSU-Baton Rouge, Louisiana Tech, ULL and Tulane).

The department has 10 computer labs that are distributed by function as follows: 2 instructional/teaching labs, 2 public labs open 24/7, and 6 dedicated research labs. Each research lab is supervised by one or more faculty members and is dedicated to a research topic. Workstations in the instructional and teaching labs have AMD Opteron processors with 2GB of RAM and 80GB SATA hard drives. The research labs contain high-end workstations ranging in price from $3,500 to $12,500 (this includes a 50% educational discount). The resources available on the research lab workstations are dual or quad core processors with 4-16GB of RAM and from 250GB to 2TB of disk space. Many machines have high-end graphics capabilities, such as dual NVIDIA 8800GTX and 5500FX cards and large flat panel LCD displays ranging from 19 to 30 inches.

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VCRL: Visual Computing Research Lab

 

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SDIL: Software Development and Instruction Laboratory

Located in room 209 in the Math building, the Software Development and Instruction Laboratory is mainly used for CSCI 1581 and CSCI 2121, which are instructional labs in the Java programming language. SDIL consists of 32 Sun Ray 2 Virtual Display Client machines running UNIX, each with a 19 inch LCD monitor. These ultra-low power consumption, thin client machines are connected to a Sun Fire V40z Server, which is comprised of four AMD Opteron dual core processors running at 2.6 gigahertz each, 32 gigabytes of DDR400 RAM, and two Ultra320 SCSI hard drives, each having 146 gigabyte capacity.

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SEIL: Software Engineering Instructional Laboratory

The Software Engineering Instructional Laboratory is located in room 320 of the Math building and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except when the university is closed). It serves as a multipurpose workstation lab for students enrolled in Computer Science classes. It consists of 24 computers running UNIX, each with a 2.2 gigahertz AMD Opteron processor, 2 gigabytes of DDR400 RAM, an 80 gigabyte SATA hard drive, gigabit ethernet connection, DVD-ROM drive, and a 19 inch LCD monitor.

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DEL: Data Engineering Laboratory

Located in room 212 of the Math building, the Data Engineering Laboratory is mainly used for CSCI 1000, which is an introductory course to computers. The lab consists of 29 machines running Windows. Each computer has a Pentium 4 2.8 gigahertz processor, 1 gigabyte of DDR333 RAM, a 40 gigabyte hard drive, gigabit ethernet connection, and a 19 inch monitor.

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HEIL: Howard Evans Instructional Laboratory

The Howard Evans Instructional Laboratory is located in room 317 of the Math building and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except when the university is closed). It serves as a multipurpose workstation lab for students enrolled in Computer Science classes. It consists of 15 Windows machines and 6 UNIX machines. The Windows computers consist of a Pentium 4 2.4 gigahertz processor, 1 gigabyte of PC133 RAM, a 40 gigabyte hard drive, and a 19 inch LCD monitor. The UNIX machines consist of a 2.2 gigahertz AMD Opteron processor, 2 gigabytes of DDR400 RAM, an 80 gigabyte SATA hard drive, gigabit ethernet connection, DVD-ROM drive, and a 19 inch LCD monitor.

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SETS: Software Engineering Team Studio

The Computer Science department in its quest for the continuing effort to provide students with the highest quality of education in the field, has implemented a suite of Software Engineering Team Studios (SETS) partially supported by a grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents.

The Software Engineering studio's vision is in par with the department's effort to provide students with practical educational experiences with the goal to enhance the learning and understanding of complex and abstract issues presented in a classroom setting. Specifically the overall objective of these set of studios is to provide an environment for the training of future software engineers in the software process and the life-cycle phases sustained during the development of software products by teams of programmers. A software engineering team consisting of 4-6 students will have access to a studio where all team activities can be carried out in an environment where such activities are best supported. Among the expected team activities to take place include:

Each studio is equipped with the appropriate hardware, software and supplies to support the team's software project development activities. These facilities include:

These facilities are provided with several programming languages, programming environments, source control tools, documentation development software, unit and functional tester software.

One fundamental role a studio implicitly provides is a place where the project lives, and where the students can check in for its status, work on its development and evolution and see themselves as team members working in conjunction in a common project. In short a place where the team and the software process come to life and students learn to deal with team's dynamic issues while immerse in the development of a project by a team of programmers.

Contact Point: Dr. Jaime Niņo

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IIS: Intelligent Information Systems

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BIL: Biomedical Informatics Laboratory

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