Utlimate Local Loop (ULL) connects to 23rd most powerful computer in world

<blockquote><p align=justify><i> High-speed link to aid research, state's economic development </i>

BATON ROUGE - Imagine a doctor at the LSU hospital in Shreveport training an imaging device on a patient's damaged eye and the image being transmitted at the speed of light to a new imaging center being constructed at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where a doctor steps into a multi-sided room, in effect inside the eye, to determine what is wrong.

With a high-speed computer link that next year will tie six universities (ULL, Louisiana Tech, LSU-Baton Rouge, Southern University-Baton Rouge, University of New Orleans and Tulane) and the LSU medical schools in Shreveport and New Orleans to the National Lambda Rail, science fiction will become practical science in Louisiana.

The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI), scheduled to be active by May 2005, should lead to remarkable research and economical development opportunities, state officials say. Universities could work with businesses to develop new products or ways to improve production.

"LONI is a very serious economic development platform," Dan Henderson of the Louisiana Department of Economic Development told a legislative panel reviewing technology developments Tuesday.

Mike Abbiatti, associate commissioner of higher education for information and learning technology, said LONI would be a "major change agent" that could reshape Louisiana by generating economic development in all parts of the state. He said that like the Mississippi River generated a delta and carved out islands, LONI's "river of facts and figures" will be "carving out islands of opportunity."

"The geographic Mississippi Delta was transformed by low tech and hand power," he said of man's efforts to control the river. "The economic Mississippi Delta is being transformed by high tech and mind power."

Although companies cannot tie directly into the fiber optic loop that runs around the state, they can benefit from associating with the universities that are tied into it, Henderson said.

The loop runs from Baton Rouge, which will be the state's tie to the National Lambda Rail, the information super highway, through Lafayette, Alexandria, Shreveport, Ruston, Monroe, Jackson and Tylertown, Miss., and back to Baton Rouge. A separate loop links Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

To maintain quality, "booster stations" are located about every 50 miles on the loop in such places as Port Barre and St. Landry in St. Landry Parish, in Derry and Coushatta along I-49 and in Arcadia, Monroe and Tallulah along I-20.

Small "super computers" are to be installed at ULL, Tech, Southern, UNO and Tulane to tie into LSU's "SuperMike," one of the world's fastest computers, said Charles McMahon of LSU's office of

telecommunications.

Abbiatti said after the original loops prove effective and begin generating revenue through grants to universities for research and state revenues through business development, other extensions are planned, especially to the University of Louisiana at Monroe since the fiber optic loop passes through the city. He said the first focus is on the state's six research universities.

"This is an investments and investments must pay off," Abbiatti said.

Completing the LONI network will cost about $25 million and in her address to the Legislature at the beginning of this year's session, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she's budgeting $40 million over the next 10 years.

<center><p><a href="http://www.dailyworld.com/html/AA3A5564-AC1A-42C8-B317-699A6B0AF075.shtml">The rest of the story</a><!--

The Board of Regents has dedicated $1 million a year for five years to pay membership in the NLR and maintain the system.
-->

some of the local guys (one of whom I have close ties to)...did some serious work to get UL included in this.

These guys(lambda rail) were going straight to BR with it, when they were headed off at the pass.

The local guys made sure we were included.

Without their efforts lsu would have had the bigstick in this, and would have delegated usage to everyone else. i believe we can all figure out how that would have gone??? LOL!!!

Congrats to the good guys.

I hope this ULL technology doesn't become a situation where a student physically goes to class at UL and the real professor is really teaching students at LSU.

Is there a connection between caling it "ULL" and the university?

<blockquote><p align=justify>LOUISIANA La. — Lafayette’s pending link with supercomputers from Seattle to New York and all points inbetween have University of Louisiana researchers reaching for ideas that had been shelved away for the future.

The distance between the conceivable and reality will close as Louisiana becomes linked to the National Lambda Rail, a fiber optic network between research universities and technology companies across the country. A link will be established in Baton Rouge, with the Board of Regents spreading the link to research institutions in the state through the Louisiana Optic Network Initiative.

“It opens new windows for current research and it will create opportunities for new research that we don’t think about right now,” said Magdy Bayoumi, head of UL’s computer science department and director of its Center for Advanced Computer Studies.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco has committed $40 million for the project, or $4 million over the next 10 years. The LONI will link UL, Louisiana Tech, Southern University, Tulane University, University of New Orleans, LSU at Baton Rouge and LSU Health Sciences Centers at New Orleans and Shreveport.

Last week, the Board of Regents created a LONI management council for the initiative that includes members appointed by the participating university’s governing systems.

The initiative links UL to supercomputers not only at nearby LSU but across the country with information traveling at more than 1,000 times faster, or 40 gigabits a second.

<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/news/html/A8120B5F-5496-4F48-B4A7-45D20AF08548.shtml">The rest of the story</a>

Marsha Sills
msills@theadvertiser.com <!--

“We can actually use these variations of supercomputers to solve problems that are larger than we can do now,” said Della Bonnette, UL vice president of technology.

The link to the national rail puts research tools within reaching distance.

“If you have the capability of real-time being able to observe, it may be possible to control a microscope in California here,” Bonnette said. “It just really opens up some wonderful worlds in research and to the community.”

While LONI space won’t be leased to private companies, it does encourage collaborations with industry.

Ray Authement, UL president, foresees benefits to the city and oil and gas industry, particularly smaller companies who may not be able to invest in equipment or research.

Researchers can study formations, reservoirs below the surface using seismic data to see what’s downhole,” Authement said. “We believe we will revitalize some of the activity (in the Gulf), certainly by the independent (companies) in Lafayette.”

One project that the link will help move forward is the Lafayette Economic Development Authority’s $18-M Acadiana Technology Immersion Center. The center’s visualization capabilities include virtual caves with 3-D imaging. The center will be a “major player” in the university’s research, Bayoumi said.

One of those windows the university would like to crack open is research in bioinformatics, Bayoumi said.

“This is where we create visualization for DNA, microbiology. It means that you have to have teams in areas, computer science, microbiology. This will help very much. We’re strong in computer science, but we don’t have a medical school. We are talking about a huge amount of data and a huge amount of information to visualize and work with.”

In the medical field, LONI has the potential to help analyze health information and impact patient information. The university’s Health Informatics Center of Acadiana’s research efforts are focused on improving the state’s health ranking from how to offer better patient care and the facilitation and collection of health information for analysis.

The center’s director, Phil Caillouet would like to see the creation of a health information network to gather and analyze data for the region.

“We have some research goals in connecting regional emergency room and health providers in a health data surveillance network,” Caillouet said. “We’re talking about non-identified data to get a better understanding of health problems and what services are needed. To accomplish that, things like LONI, are really going to help us. It will provide a data pathway.”

But for some projects, the obstacle isn’t infrastructure, but willing participants, Caillouet said.

“The existence of LONI in the future will eliminate one of the hurdles not all of it,” Caillouet said. “It won’t solve all of our particular research problems.”

But the possibilities are endless, Bonnette said.

“It’s sort of up to your imagination. Ten years ago, if you look at Internet and what would put businesses on the Internet. Now we can’t live without it. It’s a new world out there we can look at.”
-->

<blockquote><p align=justify><i>Immersion Center to raise high-tech in Lafayette </i>

LOUISIANA La. -- Ground will be broken soon on a government-sponsored technology project in Lafayette that's getting lots of attention around the world.

Officials hope the Acadiana Technology Immersion Center -- which features state-of-the-art visualization technology -- will be the next step in Louisiana's march to a better technology infrastructure.

Only five such centers exist in the world.

At the heart of ATIC will be a room, called a "visualization cave," that is essentially a six-sided room with screens on every surface -- allowing researchers to get inside their data and take a look around.

Whether it's seismic data from the oil field, detailed engineering plans, or a patient's MRI scan, visualization caves allow for a level of immersion and manipulation not possible with normal two-dimensional technology.

When completed, the Acadiana Technology Immersion Center will be the "biggest single public visualization center in the world," said Tim Costigan, a consultant who specializes in building visualization centers like ATIC. He has been hired as ATIC's consultant.

Costigan said a company from Belgium called in early January to get an update on the $20 million state-funded project.

Modern technological research hinges on being able to move "enormous" amounts of information, crunching that information into a usable form by means of supercomputers, then figuring out what the information means.

ATIC will enable small- to medium-sized businesses, as well as university researchers, to do this.

Costigan uses the example of a three-legged stool to describe the way ATIC will produce results.

The first leg will be a connection to an ultrahigh-speed network. In Louisiana, that's the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative -- or LONI. The network has not yet been built, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco has pledged funding for it.

Miles of fiber-optic cable will criss-cross the state, connecting universities. Those universities will, in turn, connect to the rest of the world over the Lambda Rail, a similar fiber-optic network that runs across the United States.

The amount of information that will be able to flow over those lines is staggering, Costigan said.

The information is then processed by the second leg, ATIC's supercomputer -- actually an internal network of several supercomputers working together.

Researchers can use those computers to run software to put all the data into the right format.

The final leg is ATIC's visualization technology.

That includes a portable 3D work environment, two teleconference rooms with 3D immersion, a 37-foot-wide 3D visualization wall inside a 174-seat auditorium and the six-sided 3D immersive visualization cave.

<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/stories/011605/new_tech001.shtml">The rest of the story</a>

By KEVIN BLANCHARD
kblanchard@theadvocate.com
Acadiana bureau <!--

The four visualization environments are another first, as is the digital projection technology. The rest of the world still uses lower-tech analog technology, Costigan said.

Doug Menefee, chairman of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce's Technology Committee, said ATIC's strength will be making the technology available to the public.

For example, many of the largest companies in the oil-and-gas industry already have some sort of visualization lab for their own use.

But with ATIC, the smaller, independent oil and gas companies in Lafayette will have the opportunity to harness the research power for themselves, Menefee said.

Duane Bloomberg, Louisiana deputy secretary of economic development, said ATIC will be the only visualization center in the nation with a focus on economic development.

Until now, facilities like this were either owned and operated for and by a private company, or used solely for university research, Bloomberg said.

No facility like this -- public or private -- exists in Louisiana, Bloomberg said.

Gregg Gothreaux, president and CEO of the Lafayette Economic Development Authority, said business will have the opportunity to buy time at ATIC, or make other arrangements.

ATIC also will be able to enter into partnerships with small companies, providing the service in exchange for future royalties, Gothreaux said.

ATIC is a joint project of LEDA and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The state Department of Economic Development also has a place on the center's governing board.

Gothreaux said the project was initially envisioned for use by the oil-and-gas industry.

None of the smaller, independent oil and gas companies based in Louisiana has access to a visualization facility.

"ATIC is an answer to that missing piece in Louisiana's oil-and-gas industry," Gothreaux said.

Bloomberg said access to the research possible using ATIC should keep more of those companies in Louisiana.

It soon became apparent that other industries would find a use for the facility as well, Gothreaux said.

Some of the potential research applications include medicine, design, engineering and information technology.

But the possibilities are unlimited, Gothreaux said.

"This facility is going to have a use for it five years from now that we haven't even imagined," Gothreaux said.

Income for ATIC could come from fees from private companies, product licenses developed there by university researchers, or other arrangements, Bloomberg said.

Those fees would be re-invested in ATIC to make sure the equipment is kept up to date.

The idea is that government provides the infrastructure and incentive and that business will provide the innovation, Gothreaux said.

The innovation should result in the creation of intellectual property that will create and expand business around the state, Bloomberg said.

But ATIC is just part of the bigger picture in Louisiana, Bloomberg said.

LONI, a high-speed fiber-optic network which will connect some of the state's research universities, and the Lambda Rail, a similar network connecting many of the nation's universities, will be crucial.

Researchers at ATIC will be able to collaborate on large-scale research projects -- such as gene therapy -- by using the two networks, Bloomberg said.

Lafayette Utilities System also has fiber-optic technology available at the University Research Park -- where ATIC will be built -- for use by the private sector.

The Department of Economic Development also is building other high-tech facilities -- with different uses than ATIC -- in other parts of the state, and those also will contribute to research and development, Bloomberg said.

That includes three bio-tech laboratories -- or wet labs -- in New Orleans, Shreveport and Baton Rouge.

"The state is developing its infrastructure for research and development," Bloomberg said.

Workers have started to move earth on the site -- in the University Research Park near the Cajundome on Cajundome Boulevard and across Devalcourt Road from LEDA's building.

The estimated $12 million construction contract was awarded to J.B. Mouton, Inc. The architects are Guidry Beazley Architects and Eskew+Dumez+Ripple.

The $8 million technology contract has not been awarded, Gothreaux said. That contract will cover all the equipment inside the 70,000-square-foot building.

-->

University of Louisiana 60 Billion bits per second <center><h2><a href="http://elearn.regents.state.la.us/PDFs/What%20is%20LONI.ppt">What is LONI?</a>

Between I-49 and the ATIC, LUS fiber loop our Lafayette(ACADIANA) and The University of Louisiana stand to grow and prosper more from these three projects than probally anything we have seen so far in our life times!

DaddyCajun
Hang onto Supermans(UL) Cape we're taking off

Quote:

---

<table bgcolor=#eaeaea> <td> <font color=#000000> <blockquote> <p align=justify>
&nbsp; Louisiana's supercomputer network is receiving a significant boost courtesy of a new deal struck with Dell computers.

The goal is to enhance the computing power of the new Louisiana Optical Networks Initiative that already is making the state's research computing capacity among the nation's best. That will place the state in prime position to receive some of the nation's top research grants.

LONI will install six clusters comprised of Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers at the six LONI member campuses: Louisiana Tech, LSU, UL in Lafayette, University of New Orleans, Southern University and Tulane University.

Each 132-node cluster will feature five teraflops of storage. In addition, LONI soon will install a network that features a 50 teraflop Intel Linux Cluster to be housed at the state's Information Systems Building in Baton Rouge.

Five teraflops permits roughly 500 trillion calculations per second in the LONI network.

<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060921/BUSINESS/609210322/1046" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>

Jordan Blum
The (Monroe) News-Star
<!--

"Never before could Louisiana really compete at the level we'll be able to compete now," said Les Guice, LONI management committee chairman and Louisiana Tech's vice president for research and development.

Delivery of the new Dell equipment should start in about two weeks, Guice said, and should be fully functional no later than December.

The new computers, along with additional system and hardware upgrades, will provide a significant increase in computational resources for academic research, including the ability to perform hurricane tracking and storm surge modeling at much higher speeds and with greater accuracy than currently possible.

"These enhancements to LONI's computing power will make the network particularly attractive to the kinds of companies we need here to energize our state's high-tech economy," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said in a prepared statement.

"That's why we're leveraging the state's investment in LONI by reserving 10 percent of the grid's computational power for the creation and retention of high-tech jobs. Simply put, any businesses in the state able to connect to LONI can use access to the network as an inducement to recruit companies that would benefit from world-class computational capacity."





-->

</td> </table>

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zeebart21

some of the local guys (one of whom I have close ties to)...did some serious work to get UL included in this.

These guys(lambda rail) were going straight to BR with it, when they were headed off at the pass.

The local guys made sure we were included.

Without their efforts lsu would have had the bigstick in this, and would have delegated usage to everyone else. i believe we can all figure out how that would have gone??? LOL!!!

Congrats to the good guys.

---

Great news. But is their any explanation, beyond the obvious, why two stops were needed in BR?