The goals of the PANTHER project are: (1) to explore the use of high-speed networking and computing to investigate file systems and data management issues for high-performance distributed computing, (2) to investigate the parallel programming support of networks of high-speed workstations and personal computers as an alternative to stand-alone parallel computers, (3) to study high-performance computer-aided design of electronic systems in a heterogeneous environment, and to develop a Web-based CAD computing center, that takes advantage of high-speed networking, (4) to explore new instructional techniques that take advantage of the high bandwidth and high speed.
This project has received support from the National Science Foundation's CISE Research Infrastructure Program over 5 years from 1997-2002, and we are entering the second year. Using funds from this project we have acquired 7 high-performance HP UNIX workstations (C-180), 9 medium-performance HP UNIX workstations (B-132), 1 UNIX fileserver (J-280), an 8-processor Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 distributed shared memory multiprocessor, and four CISCO systems ATM switches (LS1010). All the machines are connected via an ATM network operating at OC-3 (155 Mbps). The workstations are being used in both research and teaching in the area of computer engineering. We have performed measurements of the latency and bandwidth obtained on our ATM-networked workstations and have determined that we are observing order of magnitude improvements over the previous configurations using Ethernet. The workstations received as part of this project are being used to support many of the various research projects that are being described below.