1.2 STRATEGIC RESEARCH THRUSTS

The University of Texas at Austin has identified three strategic areas which serve as exemplars of the changing role and influence of digital science and information technology: Distributed Multimedia; Advanced Modeling and Simulation; and Enterprise Systems and Management. In each of these areas, the projects develop enabling technologies and new applications that migrate significant computational tasks to Intel systems equipment. Since the term of this proposal is three years, it is critical to include a plan for the infusion of new technology and new compelling projects. While the budget (Appendix A) shows current equipment and pricing, in years two and three The University expects to substitute these items with then comparable Intel systems. Similarly, the proposal includes large clusters of high performance servers that easily will allow the addition of new projects under one or more of these three areas for years two and three.

 

Distributed Multimedia
In multimedia, researchers develop enabling technologies such as computer animation, rendering and digital video telecommunications, that support a broad range of applications using interactive digital technology in the creation and consumption of messages. Distributed multimedia technology systems are increasingly critical in highly content-driven creation and delivery applications, such as real-time news and entertainment, navigation of image-intensive databases, and 3D virtual environments. These applications are computationally demanding and complex. The price-performance curve in computing technology now offers the opportunity to migrate creation and delivery applications to-off-the shelf systems, away from the special purpose workstation platforms currently used to create multimedia content. Further, that same price-performance curve simultaneously allows the content consumers to acquire similar functionality and thus to create and interact with multimedia content to a degree never before available and only recently anticipated.

Innovations in multimedia technology are primarily driven by customer demands in the growing entertainment and education markets. As both an emerging technology and an integration of existing technologies, multimedia demands a synergistic combination of research and creation applications that appeal to a human desire for content in flexible, interactive, visually compelling and engaging forms. Content is the catalyst that illuminates new ideas, inventions and processes. While the nuts and bolts needed to create and deliver such applications are becoming increasingly available, significant work is still required to scale them for widespread use. Intel and The University of Texas at Austin have mutually compelling interests in developing and understanding the intersections of multimedia content and digital technologies for both content creators and content consumers. This proposal reflects a belief that the time is right to begin development and migration work in an Intel and Windows NT environment that focuses on the development and consumption of multimedia content.

 

Advanced Simulation and Modeling
Computer simulation is an indispensable and pervasive byproduct of the information age, used extensively in education and training, design, analysis, operations, decision-making, optimization, and automatic control. Manufacturing, production and design relies upon simulation to develop efficient factories that produce quality products (e.g., Pentium Pro processor). Computer simulation allows scientists and engineers to understand and predict three-dimensional and time-dependent phenomena ranging from the nanostructure -nanosecond level in semiconductors to complex large systems such as underground oil reservoirs.

The University of Texas at Austin is a major player in the area of advanced simulation and modeling and is well-positioned to showcase the use of Intel technology in computationally demanding simulation tasks. The high-performance Pentium Pro processor is capable of displacing many traditional simulation platforms. On the desktop, Intel MMX technology coupled with high-performance PCI graphics accelerators provide a foundation for constructing world-class visualization systems. Multi-processor server systems have the capacity to outperform the supercomputers of just a few years ago. Networked together into clusters, these systems have phenomenal computing power for developing and testing new advanced algorithms.

The research thrust on advanced simulation and modeling contained within this proposal will provide the methodologies and infrastructure to build world-class simulation platforms using Intel systems. In addition, applications of advanced simulation technology in specific domains and a range of time scales will be demonstrated. The strengths, capabilities and limitations of the Intel architecture to meet the demands imposed by these simulation problems will be discovered and reported.

 

Enterprise Systems and Management
Enterprise systems are founded on providing high availability, reliability, and scalability which are all key differentiators when choosing among servers, networked systems, and vendors. We are at the critical juncture in time when serious consideration can be given to deploying computationally demanding and mission critical enterprise systems using Intel/NT systems within a heterogeneous networked environment. This proposal includes three exemplar aspects of enterprise systems: deploying a commercially viable mission-critical application set such as computational finance; assessing and managing a computationally complex real-time distributed electronic commerce application; and providing the fundamental performance assessment, best practices and management expertise of the Intel/NT environment, all within a larger heterogeneous network. The interplay of IT practitioners, real commercial needs, and university research will result in the realistic assessments of the potential powers, promise, and possible limitations of commercial off-the-shelf Intel Architecture distributed systems.

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