|
|
|
|
|
|
IU brings ancient cities "back to life" using IBM
high performance systems
Aug. 22, 2001
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Chichen Itza, Uxmal and other critically important and
threatened archaeological sites in the world will come "back to life" in virtual
reality thanks to Indiana University researchers in Indianapolis and Bloomington
and IBM High Performance Storage System (HPSS) technology that is deployed over
a wide area network.
The digital preservation project will collect data using state-of-the-art
digital techniques to archive and develop virtual reality replicas of the sites
as they exist today. It also will create scalable multimedia applications to
recreate the history, sights and sounds of the cultural locations as they were
in ancient times.
Using the Internet or the faster Internet2 or Next Generation Internet
communications technology will enable scientists, students and anyone interested
in early cultures to "walk" through the IU digital recreations. Visitors will be
engaged in seeing, hearing and experiencing firsthand how people lived thousands
of years ago.
IU's Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage (CLIOH) project is one of
several using IBM HPSS technology to compile, access and transmit vast amounts
of data among researchers hundreds of times faster. The CLIOH project is an
initiative of the IU School of Informatics. CLIOH will additionally draw upon
the visualization resources of the IUPUI New Media Program and the extensive
faculty expertise in interactive media at IUPUI.
With IBM's HPSS technology, researchers can collaborate from across the
street or across the continent to create virtual digital libraries with almost
instantaneous access to scientific data, experimental findings, books or
illustrations.
In much the same way as the world's fastest supercomputers process data in
parallel, to perform hundreds of billions of calculations per second, the IBM
open, distributed HPSS file storage system at IU is a data superhighway that
retrieves information simultaneously in parallel over a wide area network.
Transfer rates for the huge files can be as high as gigabytes per second. With
HPSS, files that normally might take hours to transfer can be downloaded in mere
minutes.
At IU, the HPSS system will foster greater collaboration between researchers,
faculty and students at the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses with instant
access up to the 200 terabyte capacity. The school's system is capable of
storing twice the amount of data held by the U.S. Library of Congress.
"Research at Indiana University has a direct bearing on society," said
Michael McRobbie, IU vice president for information technology and chief
information officer. "This is an example of how something still relatively
unknown such as IBM's HPSS is becoming more widespread in the academic
community, where the benefits from the research may move directly into
businesses or homes."
Bob Coyne, founder and chief architect of IBM's HPSS project, said the
widespread use of HPSS will greatly accelerate scientific discoveries by
leading research institutions such as IU. "We can't even imagine all the
benefits advanced storage and faster Internet technology will bring to consumers
in the next few years," Coyne said.
IU will use HPSS in research projects in biochemistry, engineering and
radiology. Massive data storage resources are also a significant contribution to
a number of major IU research projects and scientific experiments ranging from
CLIOH (http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~clio/)
to the ATLAS high energy physics experiment (http://www.usatlas.bnl.gov/)
to the National Science Foundation-funded digital music library project (http://dml.indiana.edu/).
Much of IBM's early work on HPSS was on behalf of the U.S. Department of
Energy and with research into nuclear physics at other research institutions.
About Indiana University
Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and
one of the largest universities in the United States. It has more than 100,000
students, faculty and staff on eight campuses.
About IBM's HPSS
HPSS was developed by IBM Global Services in Houston, Texas, in collaboration
with five U.S. Department of Energy laboratories: Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National
Laboratory. HPSS is a service offering of IBM Global Services. IU joined the
collaboration in 1998 and is a national leader in providing massive data storage
service in an academic setting. High Performance Storage System is a trademark
of IBM. For more information about IBM, visit
http://www.ibm.com
(Christine Fitzpatrick, UITS, 317-278-1818, cfitzpat@indiana.edu or Mike Shore, IBM, 904-278-3234, shore@us.ibm.com)