CSM’ develops distributed seismic software for workstations (July 1996)

The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) says its researchers are developing seismic data processing software that allows users to distribute large tasks across computer networks without having to become experts on parallel computing.

The group, which includes faculty and graduate students, at the Centre for Wave Phenomena (CWP), uses off the shelf hardware and free software to develop geophysical algorithms. The algorithms can run on local area networks or be scaled up to run on multi-million dollar supercomputers. The group’s current parallel workstation cluster consists of 15 network-connected Pentiums running the GNU/Linux operating system. Project software can be downloaded at no cost from CWP’s worldwide web site. (See URL http://www.cwp.mines.edu). The site additionally provides free access to Seismic Unix (SU), a complete seismic data processing system for Unix workstations that is installed at approximately 700 sites around the world. Also available is a C+ + library of optimization and numerical analysis software. In addition the site provides links to the Samizdat press, an Internet archive of free books and lecture notes.