Computer Science Laboratory Facilities Overview

General Resources

The Allen School provides and supports a wide variety of state-of-the-art computing facilities for research and instructional use, housed in two buildings; the Paul G. Allen Center, commissioned in 2003, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering, commissioned in January of 2019.  Each of these remarkable buildings has more than 80,000 sq feet of net assignable space.  Both complexes provide significant laboratory space to support new and ongoing research initiatives and interdisciplinary efforts. Both buildings were designed to facilitate interaction—both purposeful and serendipitous.  The design provides for plentiful breakout areas, reservable meeting spaces big and small and seminar rooms to nurture a sense of community and to foster collaborations among students, faculty, staff and visitors.

The Computer Science Laboratory Group (CSE IT) coordinates the acquisition, maintenance, and operation of the computing equipment and network services. General-purpose research computing is provided by over 800 Windows and Unix-based workstations located in laboratories, machine rooms and offices. The back-end infrastructure is comprised of general-purpose compute, file, web, mail and print servers, operating as a well-integrated Linux and Windows environment. In addition, this group supports around 250 physical project funded server systems and clusters hosted in two 1,200 sq ft access-controlled datacenters and 4 smaller research data rooms, all of which are climate-controlled and monitored centrally.  The School networking utilizes 1 and 10 gigabit Ethernet connections to servers and desktop machines, and a dual-band wireless network provides 802.11b/g/n connectivity between and throughout each building and in surrounding exterior areas.

Research Resources

Research in computer systems (including architecture, networking, operating systems, and distributed systems) involves a wide and constantly updated variety of hardware, software, and networks. Current hardware includes high-performance Intel multicore platforms, a 200-node Intel cluster with several tens of terabytes of networked storage, a networking testbed cluster, and PC workstations. Our facilities include Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows systems, and our clusters enjoy 1 and 10 gigabit switched Ethernet connectivity. In addition, the Systems lab provides a common workspace for operating systems, networking, and architecture students, and features Windows workstations, a video projector, and floor-to-ceiling whiteboards.

Research in VLSI, digital hardware, and embedded systems is supported by a set of PC workstations and multiprocessor compute servers. A large collection of both commercial and university computer-aided design tools form the core of the design environment providing capabilities for the design of CMOS VLSI chips, FPGA and microprocessor-based systems, and printed-circuit boards. A variety of specialized equipment for the prototyping, debugging, and testing of microelectronic systems is also available and is housed within the Hardware and

Embedded Systems Research Laboratory. These resources are utilized by research projects involved in the design of configurable computing architectures, devices to support ubiquitous and invisible computing, embedded systems, neurally-inspired computing and learning devices. Additional equipment and facilities are available in the Embedded Capstone Laboratory, which is used for undergraduate courses including Advanced Logic Design and Embedded System Design.

Research in graphics, image processing, and user interfaces, centered in the Graphics and Imaging Laboratories, utilizes a set of high-end graphics workstations, two multiple-node compute clusters with GPU processing, and a variety of special-purpose devices, including Microsoft Kinect and Leap Motion controllers, Oculus Rift VR hardware, digital cameras (still and video), a desktop Cyberware 3D laser scanner, video projectors for shape capture, and rotational and translational motion control platforms. Most of the lighting and imaging hardware resides in a special-purpose scanning and imaging laboratory, which is ideal for experiments that require controlled illumination. The main lab spaces contain an array of workstations and an audio/video hardware suite with non-linear digital video editing capabilities. The workstations in the main labs are also used as development stations for experimental teaching software in graphics and vision.