Upgrade puts Topsail among top 20 supercomputers worldwide

An upgrade of Topsail, the Dell research computing cluster at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will place it among the top 20 supercomputers worldwide according to the most recent Top500 computer rankings. Currently, Topsail has a computational capability of 6.252 teraflops. With the upgrade, Topsail’s computational capability will exceed 20 teraflops – more than 20 trillion calculations per second.
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St. John’s IT representatives visit ITS

On Wednesday, Jan. 24, representatives from St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., visited UNC-Chapel Hill to learn more about ITS programs such as the Carolina Computing Initiative (CCI) and compare notes about services such as IT support, networking and messaging.
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Webmasters meeting to cover HTML e-mails

The Feb. 1 Webmasters meeting will cover the topic “HTML E-mail Campaigns.” Jason Morningstar and Billy Hylton of ITS Web Services will discuss how HTML e-mail campaigns can be an effective way to reach audiences, but also present an interesting set of challenges. Discussion will cover best practices, coding limitations, spam considerations, tools and more. The meeting will take place at 2 p.m. in Hanes 308.

GRADS to improve course planning for students, faculty, staff

This February, ITS will release to undergraduate students its new Graduation Requirements Advising System (GRADS) to help them plan which courses to take in order to meet their graduation requirements. Students will be able to use the system to aid their spring advisement sessions to plan what classes they will take this summer and fall.

UNC-Chapel Hill advisors have already begun using the system in a pilot for the fall semester.
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ITS’ memex research featured in Endeavors

“Are human beings meant to have perfect memory?” That is a question posed in Endeavors, the publication that focuses on research undertaken at UNC-Chapel Hill.

ITS Technology Assessment and Planning’s (TAP) work on memory extension (or memex) and context aware technologies is highlighted in the current issue. To read about the challenges and potential rewards of this emerging technology, visit Endeavors at http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/win2007/memex.php.