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

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High-speed link to aid research, state's economic development

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.

The rest of the story

[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.

[CajunCall]

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.

[Bert]

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

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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.

The rest of the story

Marsha Sills
msills@theadvertiser.com

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Immersion Center to raise high-tech in Lafayette

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.

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By KEVIN BLANCHARD
kblanchard@theadvocate.com
Acadiana bureau

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University of Louisiana 60 Billion bits per second

What is LONI?

[DaddyCajun]

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

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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. The rest of the story Jordan Blum The (Monroe) News-Star

[AstroCajun]

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?

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Get ready to say hello to Zeke, The University of Louisiana's newest supercomputer. It will connect UL to the statewide network of supercomputers known as the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, and the LambdaRail, which connects computers at research institutions around the country. UL will launch Zeke on Tuesday with a ceremony at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Center. Steve Landry, vice president of academic affairs at UL, said the arrival of Zeke has many implications for local researchers and businesses. "What it does is it creates a strong partnership with the other research institutions in the state and puts the university and the university's research partners on the newest, most contemporary, fastest network available today," Landry said. The rest of the story Arnessa M. Garrett agarrett@theadvertiser.com

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LAFAYETTE — Decades ago, University of Louisiana at Lafayette professor Z.L. “Zeke” Loflin brought the first computer to campus. Loflin used that computer to come up with a technology that helped oil companies better monitor well production — which led to him forming his own business, ULL President Ray Authement said. In the current century, officials hope that Zeke, a supercomputer named for that early pioneer, will bring to campus a similar approach of public research that spurs economic development. Zeke is the supercomputer portal to ULL’s hub on the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, and became officially operational Tuesday. LONI is a statewide, ultrafast, fiber-optic network that will allow researchers — and the supercomputers they use — to collaborate in real time at facilities across the state. And Louisiana will have a seat at the global collaboration table through LONI’s connection to the National Lambda Rail — which stretches from coast to coast. The rest of the story By KEVIN BLANCHARD Advocate Acadiana bureau