Note on Departmental Computers

Serious theoretical work, whether quantal or statistical mechanics, has traditionally been done on `main-frame' computers provided either by the University or by the national centres. Departmental computers have served more as an adjunct to experimental research, although the theoreticians have not been slow to take advantage of any spare capacity. The first departmental computer was an Elliott 903 bought in 1969. It was replaced by a Data-General `Eclipse' in 1976 and then by the Norsk-Data 540 in 1983, which is being `retired' this year. The Elliott was looked after by John Danby and the later machines by Barry Coles. In the late 1980's there was, however, a change in the way in which computers were used, for the new PC's and `work-stations' had become cheap enough and powerful enough for individual research groups to have machines that could tackle serious problems. The capacity of these machines is increased if they are linked together. In 1990, therefore, the department installed an Ethernet, which links via a Sun Server, the individual machines both to each other and to the University and national computers. The new system is being run by Peter Biggs, and the distributed array of computing power is likely to meet a substantial part of the department's needs in the early 1990's.

Thermodynamics and Statistical MechanicsTheoretical Chremistry