The Intel Itanium2 cluster, consists of 32 Itanium2 processors. Each dual processor node shares 4GB of memory (64GB total) and Gigabit or Myrnet network for high speed cluster communication. The cluster is used as a development machine for TeraGrid applications.

The TeraGrid is a multiyear effort to build and deploy the world’s largest, most comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research. In 2005, the TeraGrid includes 40 teraflops of computing power distributed at nine sites, facilities capable of managing and storing nearly 2 petabyte of data, high-resolution visualization environments, and toolkits for grid computing. All the components are tightly integrated and connected through a network that operates at 40 gigabits per second.

CIS is a member of the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN). BIRN is a National Institutes of Health initiative that fosters distributed collaborations in biomedical science by utilizing information technology innovations.

Through the involvement of CIS with TeraGrid and BIRN, the internal network infrastructure is configured to take advantage of the university Internet2 access point. Internet2 is a consortium being led by 206 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet.