Computing Facilities

The faculty, researchers, and students in the Department of Computer Science have access to a wide variety of ever-changing state-of-the-art computing resources, ranging from laptops, conventional PC's and scientific workstations to high-powered compute-servers and workstation clusters used as parallel computers. All of the computer systems are interconnected by a switched Ethernet local network, which is connected to the Internet via fiber optic technology to the campus backbone. Also recently installed is a wireless network permitting instant laptop access to the Internet anywhere in the building, and ultimately anywhere on campus.

All of our faculty, Ph.D. students, and researchers are equipped with an advanced-technology PC running some variant of the Linux or Windows operating systems. The computing needs of undergraduate and master's students are met through the "Zoo", an educational laboratory with approximately 40 dual-processor Linux workstations which allow for remote as well as on-site access.

Individual research groups have additional specialized equipment for robotics, computer vision, computer music, parallel computing, networking, and other research efforts. There are a number of parallel and distributed computing testbeds, including a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000, a DEC Alphaserver 4100, and an IBM Beowolf cluster of twelve Netfinity 4000R processors. Students in computer science, both graduate and undergraduate, have liberal access to all of these facilities. In this way students play a vital role in contributing to our understanding of theoretical and experimental issues in computer science.

The Department's computing resources are professionally managed by Workstation Support Services (WSS), a unit of the Yale office of Information and Technology Services (ITS). WSS staff follow policy set by a faculty oversight committee in providing first-class responsive service to all departmental users.