The Department has first rate experimental facilities in which ideas and novel concepts can be developed, tested and proven. Within the Engineering Faculty there was a major investment in new, state of the art laboratories in 2005 to form the £18.5 million Bristol Laboratories for Advanced Dynamic Engineering (BLADE), a world class infrastructure which houses two superbly equipped laboratory buildings, one of which is the Earthquake and Large Structures Lab.
In 2005 the Department took delivery of a new research computer, comprising 120 2.2GHz Opteron CPUs running as a Linux cluster. The machine contains 60 dual processor nodes with 4Gbytes RAM each, and eight dual processor nodes with 8GBytes RAM each, all linked via Gbit/second ethernet switches. It is currently the most powerful machine in the University.
Multi-CPU clusters like this allow `parallel' codes to be run, i.e. large problems split and run over several CPUs simultaneously, but also allow scalar codes to be run with multiple data sets simultaneously, i.e. a `scalar farm'. It will allow significantly larger simulations to be performed in-house than were previously possible, resulting in better resolution and, hence, deeper understanding of the physics involved.
It will allow significantly larger simulations to be performed in-house than were previously possible, resulting in better resolution and, hence, deeper understanding of the physics involved.
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