About USC's Information Technology Services (ITS)
(Updated June 30, 2008)
ITS works around the clock to provide a reliable technology infrastructure capable of adapting to the evolving needs of the USC community. Email and directory services support more than 75,000 users who exchange approximately 12 million messages daily. The Customer Support Center handles roughly 71,000 computer-related concerns from faculty, students, and staff per year. On average, 900,000 Web pages are viewed each day on USC's primary web server, www.usc.edu.
Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC)
ITS provides faculty and student researchers with world-class computing and communications resources through its Center for High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC). The center supports more than 110 research groups in a variety of disciplines, including computer science, epigenetics, geophysics, materials science, engineering, and health sciences.
HPCC has two Linux clusters: a new 512 Dell Quad-Core Intel Xeon dual-processor node on a 10-gigabit Myrinet backbone and a 1,824 dual-processor node—of which nearly half are dual-core AMD Opteron processors—on a 2-gigabit Myrinet network. For each cluster, a bidirectional, low-latency Myrinet fiber network interconnects the nodes, allowing for the development of massive production jobs that require high-speed communications among computational elements.
In spring 2008, the new 512 cluster reached a benchmark of 30.99 teraflops, or 30.99 trillion floating-point calculations per second. According to the rankings that were announced in June 2008 by the online publication TOP500 Supercomputer Sites, USC’s HPCC is now ranked 9th among U.S. academic supercomputers, 25th in the world among academic supercomputers, and 63rd in the world among all supercomputers.
HPCC has a central facility that provides more than 400 terabytes of combined disk storage and potential access to nearly a petabyte of tape storage, as well as a Condor cluster that uses spare cycles on UNIX workstations and in USC’s general-access user rooms.
The USC Network
The university’s network employs a high-performance 10-gigabit-per-second backbone with redundant connectivity to the commodity Internet via the Los Nettos regional network and to the Internet2 and the National Lambda Rail (NLR) networks via the Corporation for Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) network. The primary campus Internet connection is provided by a direct 10-gigabit-per-second connection into a Layer 2 Ethernet switching infrastructure collaboratively maintained by Los Nettos consortium members.
ITS provides campus facilities with links via local area networks that create a variety of wired communications capabilities, ranging from 10 to 1000 megabits per second in offices, laboratories, classrooms and residence halls. Wireless access is provided in most outdoor common areas, libraries, auditoria, campus eateries, and conference rooms.
In addition, ITS provides computing facilities for USC students, faculty, and staff, including central compute servers, home file systems, web pages, multimedia classrooms and general-access user labs. ITS also provides faculty and staff with basic computing facilities and storage, central email, technology-enhanced learning, web portal and collaboration, and single sign-on services.
Under the university’s federated model for providing information technology services, school and department IT groups provide localized services focused on the needs of their core constituencies.
Last updated: Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 18:21PM PDT