Our computer facilities are state-of-the-art equipment provided to in-house staff and collaborating scientists. We have a Beowulf cluster (3 control nodes and 105 computer nodes) as an advanced computational platform for performing a variety of engineering analyses. We also use facilities outside the Division such as Jazz, a terascale (10E12 calculations per second) Linux computing cluster with 350 nodes, and the CAVE, one of the four sophisticated automatic virtual environment systems in existence.

The Nuclear Engineering Division operates a heterogeneous network of desktops, workstations, and servers to provide the computing environment for Division staff and collaborating scientists.

Batch computing is done on both a 105-node Linux cluster devoted to parallel applications and a number of high- and low-end Unix workstations. Queuing systems schedule jobs according to their requirements and available resources. Desktop units are a mix of Unix, Linux, Mac, and PC workstations, and the Division runs a number of servers providing email, file storage, Web applications and system administration.

The Division's computational resources are connected through a star-configuration, switch-based network operating at up to 1000 MBytes/second. Servers and desktop units are connected through 100 Mbps switched ports. The network is connected to the Argonne fiber network.

Extensive software applications and development tools are provided on the network. These include the Oracle database products, Adobe Products, Microsoft development and Office Packages, Matlab, Mathematica, AutoCAD, SAS in addition to C, Fortran, and C++ for code development as well as nuclear engineering codes developed at Argonne, other national laboratories, and commercial software companies.

Security for the computing environment is provided through regular configuration and vulnerability checking and extensive network security scanning. In addition, a comprehensive backup schedule seeks to assure minimal data loss in the event of data corruption or loss.