Research
ECE Research
Research Areas
Facilities
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has a number of cutting-edge facilities and services designed to effectively and efficiently further student education: our internationally acclaimed research centers provide access to industry experts and their ideas, granting students the unique experience of learning in a prolific and professional research environment; our computing services save students time and money by delivering expensive software via virtualization; and our state-of-the-art labs provide hands-on experience with advanced visualization, presentation, computing, and networking technology.
NC State Nanofabrication Facility
The NCSU Nanofabrication Facility is located in the National Science Foundation-sponsored Larry K. Monteith Engineering Research Center, on North Carolina State University's Centennial Campus, occupying a 7400 square feet class 100 and class 1000 cleanroom. The facility has a full range of micro and nano-fabrication capabilities including: photolithography, reactive ion etching (RIE), deep RIE, low pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD), plasma enhanced CVD, rapid thermal anneal, thermal oxidation, solid source diffusion, thermal and e-beam evaporation, sputtering, chemical mechanical polishing, various wet etching and cleaning processes, along with various characterization tools. Many of the tools are capable of processing on a broad range of substrates such as semiconductor glass, ceramics, and plastics with sizes from small pieces to 6" wafers.
The shared user facility has been in operation for over 25 years. Over its history, it has been heavily used by the Engineering Research Center for Advanced Materials Processing (AEMP) and later the SRC/SEMATECH Front End Processing Center (FEP), but it has now expanded to support research in a wide range of areas: optics, micro/nano-electro-mechanical structures (MEMS), bio- and molecular engineering, organic electronics and compound semiconductors.
For more information, please visit http://www.nnf.ncsu.edu/.
High Performance Computing
High-Performance Computing (HPC) is part of the initiative to provide state of the art support for research and academic computing at NC State. The HPC group provides NC State students and faculty with entry and medium level high-performance research and education computing facilities, consulting support and scientific workflow support. HPC services include shared memory computing, distributed memory computing, data storage, a suite of applications, and consulting and collaboration on computational issues.
HPC Hardware- 4 IBM p575 compute nodes each with 8 1.9GHz single-core POWER5 processors and 32GB of memory; an IBM p550 login node with two 1.65GHz dual-core POWER5 processors and 8 GB memory; and 3TB shared scratch space available to all five nodes using IBM's general parallel file system an IBM BladeCenter Linux Cluster, and Dell/EMC Clariion CX700 mass storage
- 584 dual Xeon compute nodes with 2.8-3.2 GHz Intel Xeon Processors (nominally 5.6-6.4 GFlops per processor), 4GB per node Distributed Memory, 40GB of Disk Space per node plus shared storage (>7TB total), Dual Gigabit Ethernet interconnects
- Dell/EMC Clariion CX700 storage. 16 TB (usable) disk storage. IBM 3584 Tape Library containing 3592 tape drives and tapes. Tivoli Storage Manager with Space Management software is used to provide hierarchical storage management. Older, larger files are migrated from disk storage to tape. Migrated files are restored to disk automatically if accessed. A backup copy of all files is also maintained on tape.
For more information, please visit http://www.ncsu.edu/itd/hpc/
Virtual Computing Lab
The Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) is a remote access service that allows you to reserve a computer with a desired set of applications for yourself, and remotely access it over the Internet. You can use applications such as Matlab, Maple, SAS, Solidworks, and many others. Linux, Solaris and numerous Windows environments are now available to all NC State students and faculty.
VCL Rights- On a Windows XP environment you have administrative rights.
- On a Realm Unix/Linux lab machine you have the same rights as you have in the computer labs.
- On a Non-Realm Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment you have elevated rights.
For more information, please visit http://vcl.ncsu.edu/
RENCI Visualization
The Renaissance Computing Institute at NC State University opened in early 2007 and supports the use of visualization technology and analytical methods to explore engineering, scientific, design and educational challenges. The site includes a high-resolution display system and Access Grid multicast collaboration technology. Additionally, the visualization display wall allows researchers to view large-scale, time-dependent data as color-coded visual simulations of complicated processes.
Viz Wall at Partners I Specifications- 170" wide by 96" high screen
- 16 projectors, 16:9 aspect ratio
- 5120 x 2880 pixels
- 1 PC driving the wall with an Nvidia QuadroPlex attached.
- 86" wide by 42" high screen
- 12 LCD monitors
- 5120 x 3072 pixels
- 1 PC driving the wall with 3 NVidia GeForce 8600 GTS video cards installed
For more information, please visit http://www.renci.ncsu.edu/
Cisco Telepresence
Cisco TelePresence delivers real-time, face-to-face interactions between people and places in their work and personal lives using advanced visual, audio, and collaboration technologies. These technologies transmit life-size, high-definition images and spatial discrete audio. The components of Cisco TelePresence use standard technologies in conjunction with specialized applications and hardware to create an approachable solution using the network and unified communications as core components.
Cisco has donated a Cisco TelePresence System 1000 to NC State, housed in Engineering Building II. The system is used by researchers to communicate with each other as well as collegues in corporate and governmental organizations. The Cisco TelePresence System 1000 is ideal for small group, or one-on-one meetings around a "virtual table." Two Cisco TelePresence System 1000 systems in a single meeting create a virtual table for up to 4 participants. A multipoint meeting can support up to 48 locations on a single call.
For more information, please visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns669/networking_solutions_solution_segment_home.html
Centaur Labs
Centaur Labs at NCSU serves as a focal point within North Carolina for collaborations between state and national research and education networking communities and their corporate networking partners. Centaur is the home of the North Carolina Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (NC-ITEC) chartered by Internet2 as a backbone test lab.
On a state-wide basis Centaur provides testing and consulting services for the North Carolina Networking Initiative (NCNI) and the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN).
On campus, Centaur provides a rich educational experience for technology students via hands-on access to advanced networking equipment and interactions with networking professional and vendors via class projects or lab internships.
For more information, please visit http://www.centaurlab.ncsu.edu
