Florida State University - Renegade / Tally Ho Yearbook (Tallahassee, FL)

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Computing Towards A Better Future On the fifth floor of the Keen Building, one will find the headquarters of the Supercomputer Com- putations Research Institute (SCRI). The SCRI here at Florida State is the nation ' s first university based partnership between the public and private sectors of our society. SCRI was au- thorized by an act of Congress (the big boys and girls in Washington, D.C.) in 1984. The organ- izations involved besides Florida State are the De- partment of Energy ' s Office of Energy Research, Control Data Corporation, the parent company of ETA Systems, Inc., and the State of Florida. Finally, for those of you that thought Bobby Bowden ' s Seminoles had a sizeable budget, SCRI ' s annual budget is approximately $10 million; 65% of the $10 million comes from the Office of Energy Re- search. This is the meaning of the big time. Like all well managed organizations, SCRI has a defined mission. On page one of the SCRI Annual Report for the fiscal year 1986, the first sentence states that The Supercomputer Computations Re- search Institute (SCRI) is dedicated to the utili- zation of the power and versatility of core science fields. This type of research is done by inno- vations in software design for supercomputers al- lowing for simulations of real complex events, like hurricanes, that only four years ago weren ' t pos- sible. Of course, this type of supertech requires an unusual type of hardware and SCRI has it. Located at Innovation Park, SCRI has two supercomputers available for use, the Cyber 205 and the ETA-10. Believe it or not, the ETA-10 is the fastest computer in the world, and one of them is in Tallahassee. The ETA-10 has the ability to process 10 gigaflops, which is 10 billion calculations per sec- ond. Putting that into perspective, the ETA-10 could count all the people in the world, twice, in ONE SECOND! The computer that helped send man to the moon was processing one megaflop per second or one million calculations per second. In short, the ETA-10 has serious power. Jonathan Baety (This story was reprinted and edited courtesy of the Tomahawk Magazine.) Florida Flambeau T Governor Martinez and President Sliger tour the Supercomputer facility (top). The Supercomputer facilities, which are located in Innovation Park. ► 18 Charging Forward

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Esther has her antique jewelry booth set up every Wednesday, and is very popular with most students. ▲ The yearbook even managed to build a huge yellow sign and sit out in the Union weekly. Some people just like to relax with their friends on the Union Green (middle). Campus Life 1 7

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Busy Signals Replace Long Lines When I was a freshman, we had to walk ) the Civic Center and stand in lines for ours to register for classes! Other versions f the story include standing in sweltering eat or lines that stretched clear down Pen- icola Street to the stadium. Thanks to the ew system of phone registration, that story ill go the way of the one that your parents )ld you about walking five miles to school in ie driving snow. Now when it ' s time to agister for classes, you can let your fingers o the walking — to the nearest touchtone hone. Calling 487-3470 connects you with ne of the 32 available lines of the regis- ation computer. Its friendly voice prompts ou with messages such as Enter your course request followed by the pound key now. The system immediately informs you if a class can be added to your schedule or if it is already filled. The new phone system does have its dis- advantages. For instance, it may take fifty calls or more before you actually get a ring instead of a busy signal, and sometimes rainy weather may bring the computer system down for a few hours. But if you think that ' s bad — You should have been here last year when I had to stand out in the freezing rain in registration lines that stretched from here clear down to the Capitol building! Ashley Crosby A Centel actually installed a mobile phone unit on campus equipped with six touchtone phones. All those living on campus could not use their rotary-dial phones to register for classes. The long lines in and outside the Civic Center will soon be ancient history with the new phone registration and the telephone drop add. m . ■ ' ■ . ; :: L .. ■ .. ft % I V , : . , 1 ; ; • ' a - 1 Campus Life 19