| Department of Computing | Imperial College London |
| Computing facilities | |
The Department of Computing provides all the computing facilities needed by students on its undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as for academic research work. The Department traditionally offers student computing facilities which are among the best in the UK, and academics, laboratory organisers and the Computing Support Group make sure that the most appropriate computing systems are available. Research groups within the Department also have extensive computing resources of their own and individual access to these may also be possible when students are doing project work. Full details of all systems and facilities can be found on the Department's Computing Support web pages (http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/csg/), though for security reasons some of these pages are only viewable within the college.
The Department's teaching laboratories currently have around 250 workstations and systems are constantly being upgraded. Most of the machines have 2.8 to 3.2GHz Pentium IV processors (many dual), minimum 1GB RAM, hard drives around 100GB, with CD/DVD readers/writers and large colour flat panel LCD displays and fast ethernet networking. We have a rolling upgrade programme to keep up with the fast pace of change in computer hardware, whereby we replace or upgrade hardware every three years. The computers are currently configured to run dual boot Microsoft Windows XP and Mandrake Linux 10.2 operating systems. Software includes all Microsoft products, and as much freeware on Linux as we can fit on. There are four high capacity Canon 'Image Runner' printers in the labs.
The workstations are supported by a range of the latest Sun Solaris and Intel servers running Linux connected by fast ethernet and Extreme Networks' gigabit backbone switches. All students, like staff, have personal email accounts and the use of email and the internet in general is central to life in the department.
Most of the software used for teaching is licensed for students to use on their own home systems.
The systems engineering studios provide an infrastructure for delivering advanced education and training in systems engineering with special attention to systems requirements engineering. The facilities comprise two purpose-built, configurable studios that contain state-of-the-art computing and audio-visual capabilities. A key element of the studios is a full complement of software and system production tools. The studios are also equipped with smartboard facilitating interactive presentations, using software tools and multimedia presentations, including video, stereo sound and DVD.
SunSite Northern Europe, a vast archive of software and information forming one of the busiest sites on the internet is located within the department.
| © CSG / 2005 |