VUPAC is a workstation farm: a cluster of workstations coupled loosely together to provide a (very coarse) parallel computing environment. Many compute intensive calculations do not require tightly coupled systems, and it is possible to build workstation farms with significant compute power for a fraction of the cost of tightly coupled or mainframe computers.

VUPAC is primarily being used to make atomic structure calculations and to reconstruct data and perform Monte Carlo calculations for elementary particle and relativistic heavy-ion experiments (see ``VUPAC Physics'' below). It has also been used by physicists and astronomers in the department for other purposes, such as calculating the electromagnetic fields surrounding DNA molecules and studying radiative transfer models for supernova atmospheres.

VUPAC was designed and implemented with the invaluable assitance of Denny Burnum, Frank Kyle, and Esfandiar Zafar of Vanderbilt Academic Computing and Information Services. Initial support for the project was provided by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Academic Research Infrastructure grant with matching funds from Vanderbilt University. Subsequent upgrades, administration, and maintenance have been funded by the NSF and the Department of Energy.

• Atomic Structure
• Charlotte Fischer, Professor of Computer Science, Mathematics, Chemistry & Physics and Astronomy
• Research: Computational Science: Atomic Structure Calculations and SAM--Systematic, Accurate, Multiconfiguration methods for transition data.
• Heavy-Quark Production and Decay
• Professors Paul Sheldon and Med Webster, Dr. Kevin Stenson, Daniel Engh, and Michael Hosack, Physics and Astronomy
• Experiments: BTeV, FOCUS and E687 at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
• What is Elementary Particle Physics? Where to find out more.
• Electroweak Physics at the Z-boson Mass Scale
• Professor Bob Panvini and Dr. Terry Reeves, Physics and Astronomy
• Experiment: SLD at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
• SLD Monte Carlo calculation work on VUPAC
• Recent Publications and Physics Notes
• What is Elementary Particle Physics? Where to find out more.
• Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics
• Professors Victoria Greene and Charlie Maguire, Dr. Anita Trivedi, Andrew Rose, and Tim Miller, Physics and Astronomy
• Experiments: PHENIX and E864 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
• Vanderbilt PHENIX Group
• RHIC: the Relatvistic Heavy Ion Collider
• RHIC Detector Working Group Home Page

VUPAC User Pages (VUPAC Users Only)

Links to Other Vanderbilt Home Pages:

• VAMPIRE Linux Cluster
• Department of Physics and Astronomy
• Vanderbilt University Home Page