The Welsh e-Science Centre (WeSC) is hosted by the Cardiff School of Computer Science at Cardiff University. WeSC was established as part of the UK national e-Science initiative, and has received additional funding from the Welsh Development Agency, and Cardiff University.
The Distributed Collaborative Computing research group specialises in the use of distributed computing technologies for supporting collaboration. This includes the sharing and reuse of middleware and applications, the collaborative exploration of large datasets through visualization, and problem-solving environments/portals for interfacing with distributed and collaborative resources. The Group’s research is closely related to Grid computing, and the use of the Grid for e-Science. There is a particular focus on specifying distributed scientific applications through the composition of Web services. Emerging distributed collaborative scientific enterprises require desktop access to very large data collections, very large-scale computing resources, and high performance visualization. The Welsh e-Science Centre at Cardiff University develops, implements, and deploys applications to utilise and create e-Science technologies, infrastructure, and services. An essential feature of many of these services is that they will be used collaboratively, and by geographically distributed researchers in fields such as engineering, physics, earth science, bio-science, and chemistry. In particular, the Centre promotes the collaborative development of large-scale multi-disciplinary applications, and the immersive visualization of large multi-dimensional data sets.
WeSC hosts the Cardiff Distributed Visualization Facility offers state-of-the-art visualization hardware and software. The facility comprises: SGI Onyx 300, (32-processor and three IR3 graphics subsystems) for large shared-memory capability problems that have a requirement for ultra-low latency communications and for closely coupled access to industry-leading visualization. Connected to the system are four eight-processor SGI Origin 300 servers handling throughput work using a Myrinet™ interconnect, allowing the processors to be used in parallel to tackle large-scale distributed-memory applications. These systems drive a range of large scale visualization display including a FakeSpace Workwall (1.8m x 2.3m) and two FakeSpace Immersadesk R2s. These system run a wide suite of commercial and in-house developed software including AVS/Express, COVISE, VRCO CaveLib and Triana. WeSC also hosts an AccessGrid node. In addition to these facilities Cardiff University also hosts the Helix computation and 3D visualization system which is utilised by a number of Schools throughout the University. The Helix facility includes: Beowulf cluster with 99 nodes and 198 processors, running Linux with over 160 GB RAM and almost 10 TB of storage. The nodes of the Beowulf cluster are connected via a high-bandwidth, low latency, dedicated network. Visualization facilities include a 3D stereographic semi-immersive workwall, with 2.3 m x 1.8 m screen, located in a dedicated room with seating space for 18 and 3D stereographic semi-immersive desk, with a 1.1 m diagonal screen. Located in a dedicated room with sufficient space for 1-3.