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Introducing Computer Centre |
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The HKU Computer Centre provides a wide range of IT facilities and services with a state-of-the-art networking environment to support all University staff and students for their teaching, learning, research and administration.
Our facilities include advanced network facilities, powerful central servers, high-performance computers and distributed PC laboratories, while our services include single sign-on HKU Portal services, web-based administrative applications and web-based learning platform.
These comprehensive facilities and services enable members of the University to have the best IT resources and environment for supporting their teaching and learning activities.
It is the mission of the Computer Centre to provide advanced and reliable IT services to the University community so that staff and students could readily access all the network services anytime and anywhere. We work in support of the vision and mission of the University, to sustain and enhance the University's excellence as an institution of higher learning through outstanding teaching and world-class research so as to produce well-rounded graduates with lifelong abilities to provide leadership within the societies they serve.
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HKU Portal
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The HKU Computer Centre runs 24-hour non-stop computer and network services to support the IT needs of the University. Every staff and student is given a unique user-identification, the HKU Portal UID and an associated PIN (the personal identification number), which facilitates all members of the University to access a wide range of network services and applications easily through our single sign-on platform, the HKU Portal.
The HKU Portal provides a user-friendly and easy-to-access interface for University members to access all the centrally-provided IT services including electronic mail, Intranet services, web-based administrative applications, web-based courses and HKU Electronic Services Delivery (HKUESD) applications through our high-speed campus network. With the personalized and customizable interface of HKU Portal, users are free to choose the types of information they wish to receive and the format to display the information.
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IT for Teaching and Learning
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The University recognizes the importance of IT to support teaching and learning. A "Campus Notebook Programme" has been organized since 1998 which enables undergraduate freshmen entering the University to own a notebook computer at an affordable cost to facilitate their access to the network services anytime and anywhere.
The Computer Centre works towards the same vision of the University and endeavors to provide the best services available. Free access to the Internet and ample disk storage, up to 120M bytes, are provided to each staff and student to facilitate their electronic mail communication, participation in open electronic forums and setup personal webpages.
A popular web-based electronic course platform, WebCT, has been set up since 1998 to support interactive web-based teaching and learning over the network. The WebCT platform has gained popular use among the teachers over the years and we now have over 1,000 WebCT courses.
Besides, regular induction courses and training workshops on the use of multimedia design software and web page authoring tools are also arranged for teachers to acquaint themselves with the related IT skills.
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PC Facilities
The Computer Centre maintains six PC laboratories housing 210 PCs and one Access-Everywhere-Network (ACEnet) laboratory for use by all students and staff members. Users in the laboratories can have readily-accessible laser printing service at nominal charge. A wide variety of the latest PC software packages, including word-processing, web page design and statistical analysis are provided to meet various requirements of our students in their academic studies. |
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HKU Campus Network
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To support all the IT services in the University, the Computer Centre has installed a high-speed, sophisticated and resilient campus network infrastructure for the University based on Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and WiFi Wireless LAN technologies. All major remote campuses and halls are connected to the core of the campus network by means of Fast Ethernet WAN (Wide Area Network) links. The network infrastructure is managed with enforcement of high security measures, spam and virus filtering and Quality of Service (QoS) bandwidth regulation.
The coverage of the University Campus Network is extensive with more than 23,000 network points and over 500 wireless access points. A ubiquitous network access environment, known as ACEnet (Access-Everywhere-Network), has been established to provide staff and students with wired and wireless connectivity to the campus network.
Wireless connectivity is also available in all centrally-administered classrooms and public areas in the main campus. Students can easily connect to the campus network and Internet in student residential halls via the Hall Network. Home access to the University Intranet applications is supported via the HKUVPN gateway for users of broadband services or via HKUPPP services with 56Kbps modems for dial-up users. Basically, our staff and students are provided with non-stop availability to access the campus network anytime and anywhere.
The HKU campus network is connected to other tertiary institutions in Hong Kong through HARNET (Hongkong Academic and Research NETwork). Also through HARNET, we are connected to China's CERNET (China Education and Research Network), Taiwan's TANET (Taiwan Academic Network) and Internet2 in the United States.
Through the high-speed links to these academic and research networks, University members are provided with the resourceful network connectivities to enhance their research collaborations with other academics on a global scale.
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High Performance Computation Support
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The Computer Centre has installed advanced and high-availability computer servers to support computation-intensive research activities in the University.
Since the University's first parallel computer system was installed in 1993, the Computer Centre has been providing assistance to the researchers in the University to develop parallel programs that improves the computational speed by orders of magnitude.
The Computer Centre runs an IBM 128-node high-performance PC cluster with dual-Xeon 2.8 GHz CPUs that was installed in October 2003. This 256-CPU cluster has a theoretical peak processing power of over 1,400 Giga-FLOPS and is currently the fastest computer in Hong Kong. The system was ranked 240 in the Top 500 Supercomputer List in November 2003 and was ranked 308 in the same list in June 2004. In cooperation with the Department of Physics, another 100 CPUs have been added in October 2004 to this system to form a 356-CPU cluster, giving a theoretical peak processing power of over 2,000 Giga-FLOPS.
Another remarkable achievement in High Performance Computing is the installation of the first Windows High Performance Computing (HPC) Cluster in Hong Kong in September 2004. Indeed, this is a new and emerging development in global perspective in deploying Microsoft's Windows and .NET technology to provide a lower-cost HPC platform that can be integrated easily with other Microsoft technologies.
A powerful 24-node SUN SunFire 6900 system has been installed to support bioinformatics research in the University, and to provide the most up-to-date software tools and nucleotide and protein databases for bioinformatics research and studies through collaboration with the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre and funding support from the HKSAR Government Innovation and Technology Fund. The databases are updated daily through the Internet2 connection. The system supports anonymous access and is currently attracting an average monthly hit of over 1,200,000 times from different parts of the world.
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