State-of-the-art computing facility now up and running

An average personal computer holds 20 to 40 gigabytes of data, enough to hold information for any student. The Wrubel Computing Center, IU's new computing facility, holds slightly more. With 10 terabytes of storing space, the Analysis and Visualization of Instrument-Driven Data facility is 300 times more powerful than the computer sitting on your desk.\nThe system, which was finished in March and is finally operational, is a revolutionary computer that can handle very large data sets, analyze real-time data and create low-cost 3-D visualizations.\nWith the 10 terabytes of spinning disk space and a close connection with IU's massive data storage system, the facility will be able to analyze data from experiments done many years ago. According to the facility's Web site, AVIDD's unique design makes it useful in a variety of areas, including life sciences, geophysics, atmospheric sciences, physics and chemistry. \n"There are few, if any, similar efforts in existence today," the Web site said. \nThe hardware portion of AVIDD consists of an integrated quartet of Linux clusters tied together as a single computational resource, according to the Web site. The largest portion of the funding for AVIDD came from the National Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program. Vice President of Information Technologies Michael McRobbie pursued the funding. \nDr. Alex Dzierba, a professor of physics who specializes in experimental particle physics, will finally be able to see the results of an experiment he completed seven years ago. The experiment, which was done at Brookhaven Laboratory in Long Island, N.Y., was searching for a new type of matter. In the process, the experimenters realized that the data collected couldn't be analyzed at the time. "Now with something like AVIDD available, we can do that," Dzierba said. "We've moved all of the data we have over to AVIDD and the storage system at the computing center."\nThe facility's 3-D visualization capabilities are also exciting for many fields of study. AVIDD provides a way for scientists to create these visualizations inexpensively. \n"Having three-dimensional visualizations is a powerful tool," Dzierba said. "You can look at correlations in three-dimensional space, rotate that space, make slices. It's an incredible feature." \nDr. Craig Stewart, the director of research and academic computing at University Information Technology Systems, said he believes the AVIDD facility will put IU on the cutting edge of computing technology. \n"The AVIDD facility makes possible scientific research that would otherwise be impossible," Stewart said. "The unusual thing about AVIDD is that it can handle real-time data requests, and at the same time, it can run at a high rate of utilization." \nStewart said the software will pause a computer job that isn't time-sensitive to run a real-time job. \n"This is unusual because we can keep it busy all the time. If someone wants to analyze something in real-time, AVIDD can handle that," he said. "There are few, if any, other systems in the world that have that capability"