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H-SC Computer Science Club Visits Two Research Projects at Virginia Tech
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by Vince Sparzak '08
Computer Science Club President
 Recently
the Hampden-Sydney College Computer Science Club visited two of Virginia Tech's
most renowned research projects. The club members left H-SC around eight o'clock in the morning for
the central campus in Blacksburg,
VA, where the first research project to be visited is located.
We met Dr. Nicholas Polys, Director of Visualization of the CAVE system and Advanced Research Computing (ARC), on the third floor of Torgersen Hall where the CAVE is situated and where the development of the systems and images occur.
Those who work with this particular project use dual booting operating systems
 of both Windows and Fedora Core 6 Linux. Fedora
Core, now known as just Fedora, is a development distribution of the Linux operating system which can be easily found on the web
free of charge.
In order to synchronize the video on the four sides of the CAVE walls, the system utilizes a small cluster of servers to process the immense amount of data that is necessary to render the images within the CAVE. Each person in attendance was able
to try out a different scenario which included looking at a microscopic level of the human
 tonsils, flying through a highly detailed city, and taking a tour of what could be best described as a large-scale capital project.
In order to see the synchronized video properly, special polarization glasses are needed to filter out certain light. The person
who is in the "driver's seat" and operates the controls wears a different pair of glasses which is used for motion tracking.
Some practical uses of the CAVE include the areas of biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, geophysical exploration, marketing,
architecture, and gaming environments. To be more specific, the CAVE can be used to simulate or render images for molecular and
structural biology, neuroscience, oceanography, seismology, product planning, site analysis, and interior design. The list goes
on and on because if it can be drawn and rendered on a high-end computer system then it can be displayed on the CAVE.
 In the afternoon Luke Scharf, systems administrator of System X (10), gave us the grand tour of the supercomputer research area
of the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) facility at Virginia Tech. Originally, prior to 2004, System X consisted of 1,100
off-the-shelf G5 desktop systems and now contains 1,100 rackmount Apple Xserve G5 systems that feature Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC
970FX processors, 4 GB ECC DDR400 (PC3200) RAM, 80 GB S-ATA hard disk drive, and
one Mellanox Cougar InfiniBand 4x HCA. The operating system on each machine features Apple Macintosh OS X 10.3.9. The supercomputer was at one time
ranked as the third fastest clustered system in the world and is considered to be the most inexpensive system built in
its class. System X can run applications in the areas of molecular dynamics, weather modeling, quantum chemistry,
C programming, Fortran compilers, and Mathematica. Along with System X, the ARC facility houses machines like SUN systems, SGI systems, and visualization systems which are designed for research applications.
 Mr. Scharf said, "It is not uncommon to have at least one machine die in any given week." The photo on the
left shows one of the malfunctioning Xserves opened up for service.
After visiting the System X supercomputer research project, the club returned to
Farmville to enjoy a delightful dinner. The trip gave members and guests of the
club an opportunity to see how people are working to advance technology.
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