A Contemporary Modular Design For Computing Science Instructional Laboratories: The Simon Fraser University Experience

The design of an Academic Computing Facility which accomodates research, instruction, and administration by the Simon Fraser University Computing Science Department is described. Thc facility is designed to meet the hardware and sof 1 warc requirenients of graduate and undergraduate instruct ion in fundamental and applied computing science, and to meet the requirements of research into instructional technology and riiethalology. The Computing Science Academic Computing Facility is composed of superminicomputers and microcomputers, connected by a network. The facility design takes advantage of the decreasing price of mini- and microcomputer hardware and software to replace the nearly obsolete mainframe instructional computing equipment currently in use with computing equipment which is rapidly becoming the standard in computing research and application. The suggested state-of-the-art, modular computing facility concept should prove to be of significant value to a wide variety of disparate computing science departments.