Click on the Image to download a Quicktime movie of slides describing High Performance Computing in Monmouth College Physics Department.
Computing in Physics
We have computing facilities in the Physics Department that one does not often find at a small liberal arts college. Our ability to do scientific computing is an exciting feature of our department.
We believe that it is very important for our students to have a wide range of computational experiences on many different platforms and operating systems. Our computing resources include:
Parallel/Grid Computer: We have a parallel computer based on Sun Microsystems Ultrasparc processors. Currently our grid consists of over 110 processors and runs the Sun Gridengine Scheduler. MPICH2 and MPE are installed along with Sun Microsystems compilers--allowing us to do parallel computing using the MPI standards. We hope to be at 128 processors soon. This grid allows us to do a wide range of computationally intensive problems at the research level and in the classroom with students. Current parallel projects include: Theoretical Nuclear Physics, Protein Folding, and Atmospheric Physics.
Unix Workstations: We have a collection of SGI Octanes and other Unix workstations to support scientific computing and program development.
OS X Macintoshes: Our entry-level laboratory in physics and our Astronomy lab are outfitted with iMacs running OS X. These machine support a wide range of computing activities in the lab and are available for science students for computing projects.
Windows XP PCs: We have built a small laboratory of XP PC's to support activities in GIS (Geographic Information Systems). This small lab is the basis for what we hope will be a larger GIS presence in the Sciences and across our campus.
PC Based MCA: We have a two PC based MCA's (Multichannel Analyzers) in our Nuclear lab that support our Nuclear Physics class and student projects.