Funds from this grant will support an upgrade to the general computing environment at the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) so that students, staff and faculty researchers can better study some of the many modern geophysical problems whose analysis requires computationally intensive manipulation of large data sets and the capability to visualize detailed, complex images of the results. The resources to be purchased will be used to advance research in marine seismic methods, interpretation of mid-ocean ridge processes, global seismology, mantle convection, geomagnetism, infrasound, space geodesy, and other scientific projects. A compute cluster and high performance workstations will provide substantial computing power for problems too large to address with a desktop machine. A network attached storage device will promote sharing of common data sets in an efficient manner and provide each department member with a common working directory accessible at very high speed from all machines on the IGPP local area network (LAN). Workstations will provide graduate students with a tool to complete class exercises and initiate thesis research. Overall, addition of these devices will simplify administration of the IGPP LAN and allow overburdened IT professionals to concentrate their efforts on more productive activities. Improving the local infrastructure will immediately provide a more reliable and stable conduit through which outside users can access several facilities at IGPP that are shared and/or accessed by scientists in other departments or at other universities. Key examples include the IRIS/IDA seismic Data Collection Center, the Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center, and the SIO Visualization Center. ***
