The Computer Systems Laboratory and the Laboratory Systems Unit of the Computer Center Branch are working jointly on a project to provide researchers with 32-bit, UNIX-based, high- performance workstations manufactured by a variety of vendors. The workstations will be interconnected by the NIH campus-wide LAN, by which they will share expensive resources and access services such as file backup, software maintenance, electronic mail and news, and online documentation. Potential applications for Advanced Laboratory Workstations (ALWs) include interactive graphics, laboratory data acquisition and analysis, modeling, image processing, and desktop publishing. We are adapting software from projects with similar goals which have been underway for several years at Carnegie-Mellon University (Project Andrew) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Project Athena).
