| History | Facility | SimCenter Computing | EMCS Facilities | How to Get Here |
SimCenter History
Originally established in 2002, the SimCenter at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has taken a significant step forward by expanding to become a national center in the critical technology area of computational modeling and simulation. The SimCenter now has over twenty full-time Faculty and Staff, most of whom have extensive prior research and teaching experience in computational engineering. Many also have extensive career experience in industry and/or government.
The SimCenter has established a national reputation for excellence in solving real-world engineering problems in diverse fields such as hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, propulsion, heat transfer, electromagnetics, and computational design optimization. The National SimCenter will leverage its expertise in these areas to expand and broaden its research and education programs to promising new areas important to U.S. technology leadership and including national issues such as sustainable energy, environment, healthcare and defense.
Chattanooga’s leadership sees the National SimCenter as the focal point for a new University-based technology community which will make Chattanooga a significant part of the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor. The National SimCenter will contribute to this vision through external partnerships that strengthen the high-technology intellectual base of Chattanooga and that stimulate and support ongoing economic development initiatives.
Dr. David L. Whitfield is the SimCenter Director and Associate Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Before coming to UTC, he founded and directed the ERC SimCenter at Mississippi State University and was a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He was also one of three co-founders of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (NSF/ERC) for Computational Field Simulation at MSU (1990-2001).
Dr. Henry McDonald, UTC Chair of Excellence in Computational Engineering, also helps lead the SimCenter. In 2002 he completed two three-year terms as the Director of NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California, where he established the NASA Center of Excellence in Information Technology. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received numerous other honors and awards.
Dr. Timothy W. Swafford, Professor of Computational Engineering is responsible for the UTC Computational Engineering Program. He was formerly Deputy Director, Applied Technology Department for Sverdrup/AEDC Group at Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee.
Dr. W. Roger Briley, Professor of Computational Engineering, is the Research Coordinator for the SimCenter. He was formerly Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Hearin Eminent Scholar in Engineering at MSU.
Dr. Lafayette K. Taylor, Research Professor of Computational Engineering, is responsible for SimCenter Research Project Integration. He was formerly Research Professor of Computational Engineering at MSU.
Dr. Robert E. Melnik, Professor of Computational Engineering, is responsible for developing new research initiatives and customer base in areas complementary to core SimCenter capabilities. He has completed a distinguished forty-year career at Northrop Grumman.
The SimCenter and Graduate School of Computational Engineering are both part of the UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science.
SimCenter Research and Education Facilities
A 31,000 sq. ft. SimCenter research and education facility was officially opened in November 2003. It is located at 701 East M.L. King Boulevard, adjacent to the UTC campus.
The UC Foundation renovated this formerly unoccupied building, which had been donated by the City of Chattanooga.
The SimCenter facility includes faculty offices, student cubicles, a 1,500 sq. ft. computer room, a conference/meeting room accommodating 25 people, an 80-seat auditorium, two secure expandable suites of rooms dedicated to proprietary and/or classified research, a research library, and other work space.
The interior layout is designed to facilitate extensive cross-disciplinary interactions among faculty and students, with student cubicles in large open spaces adjacent to faculty offices.
Computing Facilities
Local Facilities – The SimCenter computing facility includes the following resources:
Computer Servers- 1300 core 325 node diskless cluster (Dell)
- Dual-core Intel EM64T 3.0GHz Xeon processors
- 4 GB RAM per node
- GigE interconnect (576 port Force10 E1200 switch)
- 160 processor 80 node diskless cluster (Dell)
- Intel EM64T 3.2GHz Xeon processors
- 2 GB RAM per node
- GigE interconnect (shares a switch with the larger cluster)
- 64 processor 32 node diskless cluster (Microtronix)
- Dual Intel 3.2GHz Xeon processors
- 2 GB RAM per node
- GigE interconnect (48 port HP ProCurve switch)
- 12 processor 6 node diskless cluster (IBM)
- Dual Intel 2.8GHz Xeon processors
- 2 GB RAM per node
- GigE interconnect (24 port D-Link switch)
- 2 Sun Fire V880 Servers (one donated by Sun Microsystems for teaching and research)
- Eight 900 MHz UltraSparcIII processors
- 16 GB RAM
- 0.5 Terabytes storage
- 4 processor compute server (Dell)
- Quad Intel EM64T 3.6GHz Xeon processors
- 32 GB RAM
- 292GB high-speed local storage
Desktop Computers
- 18 dual-processor Intel Xeon graphics workstations
- 6 dual-core dual-processor Intel Xeon graphics workstations
- 3 dual-core dual-processor AMD Opteron graphics workstations
- 26 Intel Pentium IV workstations
- 13 Sun Blade 150 workstations
- 3 Sun Blade 2000 workstations
- 1 SGI Octane2 (dual MIPS R14K, 2.5 GB RAM)
Infrastructure
- 96 port Cisco Catalyst 4506 GigE switch
- 32 port Brocade Silkworm 3900 SAN switch (2GB/s)
- 4 SunFire v100 servers
- HP Color LaserJet 4600dn printer
- Dell 5110cn color laser printer
- Dell 5210n laser printer
- Lexmark C750 color laser printer
- HP DesignJet 5000ps large format color printer
Data Storage
- 20.8TB usable disk storage array (DataDirect Networks)
- 10 node dual-processor IBM x335 2.8GHz Xeon storage cluster
- IBRIX Fusion parallel file system
- 600MB/s sustained write throughput
- Available from every computer in the SimCenter
- ADIC Scalar 1000 - tape backup with 64.4TB usable space expandable to 160TB
The Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Building
The new UTC Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Building is located on Vine Street across from the Fine Arts Building. This State-funded $28.8 million structure combines two buildings. The East building provides office space, and the West building houses state-of-the-art classrooms, auditoriums, and computational laboratory facilities. The building also includes advanced teaching resources and research facilities. Technology developed at UTC allows students the option of working on campus or at home through a continuous Internet connection to online labs that are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The UTC vision for a single building housing engineering, mathematics and computer science offers great potential for cross-disciplinary interaction among faculty and students in these areas. This particular arrangement provides a unique opportunity for innovations in engineering and science education that reflect current trends toward increased use of computational analysis and design in various high-technology industries. The new Computational Engineering interdisciplinary graduate program is housed in the new UTC facility.
How To Get Here
From Memphis
- I-40 East to Nashville.
- Pick up 440 loop to I-24 East.
- Take I-24 East to 27 North (Downtown Chattanooga).
- Exit at M.L. King Blvd.
- Turn right onto M.L. King Blvd.
- Travel to traffic signal at Peeples St. (SimCenter parking lot is on the left)
- I-24 East to 27 North (Downtown Chattanooga).
- Exit at M.L. King Blvd.
- Turn right onto M.L. King Blvd.
- Travel to traffic signal at Peeples St. (SimCenter parking lot is on the left)
- I-75 South to I-24 West to 27 North (Downtown Chattanooga).
- Exit at M.L. King Blvd.
- Turn right onto M.L. King Blvd.
- Travel to traffic signal at Peeples St. (SimCenter parking lot is on the left)
- I-75 North to I-24 West to 27 North (Downtown Chattanooga).
- Exit at M.L. King Blvd.
- Turn right onto M.L. King Blvd.
- Travel to traffic signal at Peeples St. (SimCenter parking lot is on the left)
- I-59 North to I-24 East to 27 North (Downtown Chattanooga).
- Exit at M.L. King Blvd.
- Turn right onto M.L. King Blvd.
- Travel to traffic signal at Peeples St. (SimCenter parking lot is on the left)
- Follow signs to Hwy 153 via Shepherd Road
- Take Hwy 153 South to I-75
- I-75 South to I-24 West to 27 North (Downtown Chattanooga).
- Exit at M.L. King Blvd.
- Turn right onto M.L. King Blvd.
- Travel to traffic signal at Peeples St. (SimCenter parking lot is on the left)
