Even to the casual observer, it is obvious that computer hardware and software are advancing at an incredible pace, and that this situation will continue into the foreseeable future. The provision of up-to-date computer resources to support the proposed programme must, therefore, be regarded as an ongoing process.
It must be understood that such computer resources are essential to the research programmes of the faculty participating in the programme. Indeed, the bulk of the computers currently in place to be used in this programme were financed by NSERC and other externally awarded research funding. This situation will, doubtless, continue as long as we have the funded members of faculty upon whom the programme must rely in any case. It has been agreed that those internal resources which have been purchased by research funding awarded to individual scientists at MUN will be available for projects carried out under their supervision on the same basis as other graduate work carried out under their supervision, and to a limited extent for the course work of other students in the programme. Most course work will be carried out on computers controlled by academic units and the Department of Computing and Communications.
Four participating faculty members are part of a nation-wide group known as HPCnet. It has been awarded NSERC funding of \$175,000 per year for 3 years with the goal of providing efficient access to existing high performance computing resources in Canada, and is preparing a proposal for further capital funding. As a participating group, we have one member on the management committee. As well, one of us has recently been elected to the executive committee {(\bf to be confirmed)}.
In parallel with this proposal for the M.Sc. degree in Computational Science, a major initiative has been under way to acquire a significant increase in scientific computing power for MUN scientists. It involves discussions with major computer vendors and other external organizations which might use such a facility and contribute to it financially. Very recently, Digital Equipment Corporation has agreed to lend to Memorial a 4 processor DEC 4100 with 4 GB of memory. This is a major computational resource with a value of over \$500,000. It will be used for research purposes, including those of the participants of this proposed M.Sc. programme, under the guidance of a steering committee reporting to the vice-president (research). It will also be used by other members of HPCnet across Canada. This activity will help position MUN and this new programme in high performance computing in Canada.
In addition to resources available via HPCnet, some other external resources will also be used in this programme. MUN and the Institute of Marine Dynamics have signed a memorandum of agreement designed to increase cooperation and sharing of resources. More specifically, the IMD has lent a four processor Stardent computer to MUN for high performance computing.
An essential feature of modern computational science is very high speed communication among computers. The current installation of MUN-net, which is a state-of-the art ATM network operating at 155 MB/s and is connected to (CANARIE), the National Test Network (NTN) and the developing Atlantic Canada Organization of Research Networks (ACORN), provides us with an invaluable part of our competitive resource base. Related work on this campus on load sharing and distributed computing places us at the leading edge of this kind of high performance computing. Continuing work on load sharing is a priority of HPCnet and its commercial participants.
The following is a list of hardware resources which are available for this programme, including the DEC 4100 to be delivered in August, 1996 and upgraded in September. They include computers purchased with externally awarded research grants of the participants, and others purchased by the university. The environment uses UNIX operating systems.
Department of Computing and Communications
Department of Computer Science
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography
Institute for Marine Dynamics
Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Atlantic Canada Organization of Research Networks}
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