£250,000 SRIF grant providing an Access Grid Node and a High Performance Computing cluster

Tuesday 28 February 2006

The Department of Computing has its own Access Grid Node (AGN) facility, installation of which was completed on 28 February 2006.

AGNs are used to run large-scale nationally and internationally distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials, and training.

The Department's AGN has a 6 metre screen for simultaneous videoconferencing, presentation sharing and software demonstration, with interactive whiteboard capabilities and an induction loop provided for the hard of hearing. It has been QA tested by the Access Grid Support Centre (AGSC).

Individuals can attend sessions using a desktop AGN, called a Personal Interface to the Access Grid (PIG), and AGN sessions can be digitally captured in full and subsequently reviewed.

The AGN is part of the Science Research Investment Fund (SRIF-3) programme of improvements at UniS, and will soon be supplemented by a High Performance Computing (HPC) system from a leading provider.

For further information on Grid computing at Surrey, contact Dr Lee Gillam