A nine-member delegation, led by Deputy Director Whey-Fone Tsai of the NCHC, was at the SC99 Exhibition in Portland, Oregon during the week of November 13-19, 1999. Close to 70 exhibitors, many from outside the United States, participated in the "research exhibits." It was a record turnout. This is the second time that the National Center for High-Performance Computing participated in the SC Exhibits. Last year, at SC98, the NCHC was initiated into the iGrid. It is especially fitting for the NCHC to participate in this year's event for the emphasis is on "High Performance Networking and Computing." A recent mandate charged the NCHC to take on the implementation of the nation's high-performance networking.

Making use of the ImmersaDesk set up at the exhibit floor, the team presented several projects. Dr. Fang-pang showed the modeling of patterns generated to simulate wood grains during the manufacturing of "plastic wood." Made by extrusion, the fake wood is a substitute of the natural product for paneling and molding in the construction industry. The modeling is based on the Numerical Wind Tunnel, developed at the NCHC.

Dr. Shin-jye Liang demonstrated the "Hydrodynamic Model System for the Tamshui River." As the second largest river in Taiwan, the Tamshui River flows through the Metropolis of the Great Taipei area and has become highly polluted, despite costly attempts to clean it up. The hydrodynamic model as applied to the Tamshui River simulates flows under tidal forcing, upstream inflows and interactions between fresh water and seawater. Model predictions are illustrated in a distributed and interactive visualization environment (DIVE). This Internet-based visualization environment uses both VRML and OpenGL to display simulated results along with surrounding terrain in a 3D virtual world. It also uses CORBA to support distributed communications and collaboration. His ultimate goal is to create a computational infrastructure for predicting and visualizing flow scenarios, for forecasting natural disaster, and managing ecosystem. Such a framework builds on the integration of the geographic information system (GIS), hydrodynamic and pollutant transport models, and visualization tools as well as virtual reality.

Dr. Hsien-Chie Cheng presented his team's work on "crashworthiness simulation" of a new-model car manufactured by Yulong, the domestic motor company. Profiles of simulated crashes from a 50 kmph frontal impact into a rigid flat wall during a 0.07 seconds span were generated using supercomputers as well as the nonlinear transient FEM code: LSTC-DYNA3D. (http://saturn.nchc.gov.tw:9091/mmtool/drug.mpeg)

Dr. Shih-Hung Chen has developed a simulation environment and analysis tool (SEAT) as an internet-based collaborative environment for the dynamic computation of plasma physics. His system now incorporates a visualization module and computing solvers, making it even more versatile for sharing computing resources.

Being at the exhibit floor, the team had the good fortune to witness the historic delivery of 2.4 Gbps packet-over-SONET transmission. It is a record speed, surpassing the line rate for HDTV demonstration at Internet2 fall meeting just one month earlier. Next generation Internet technologies are richly represented at this year's exhibits. While there, the group had the opportunity to conduct network measurement for TANet2's link to the exhibition center.

The TANet2 backbone will be upgraded and in full operation by February 15. In the new two-star configuration, the line rate connecting the two is 300 Mbps, between NCHC-PoP and MOE-PoP. Reaching out to other PoPs will be 20 to 30 Mbps each. This bandwidth is sliced from a 60-90 Mbps allocated for each PoP that is on both TANet2 and TANet. The latter is the educational network that services universities and colleges. Its inclusion of K-12 schools during the past year created so much congestion that this new upgrade is but an interim remedy until another T3 replaces the current configuration and supplements the other T3 already in place. Chung-Hwa Telecom, the carrier responsible for the TANet2 upgrade, will complete the installation and testing by January 31 while our vendor, Hitron Technology, continues to service the new backbone. Hitron, which also runs HTnet, is an ISP that won the bid to service TANet2 and mans the Network Operation Center since last May.

Six more institutions signed on to TANet2, bring the total to twenty-six. The new additions came after a new round of applications was submitted in October. Members of the TANet2 Policy Committee served as reviewers. It marked the first time that an institution in the arts, Tainan National College of the Arts, was accepted. In all, most universities that emphasize research are now on TANet2. It is expected that after the upgrade of the domestic backbone, more institutions will apply. An announcement of RFP will be issued in March.

It took several months for network engineers at universities to warm up to native multicast, although it was made available since September 3, 1999. By establishing peering relationship with vBNS border gateway routers with MBGP, TANet2 has gained access to multicast sessions from our peered networks. As TANet2 PoPs that deployed multicast increases from four to the current eight, and with two other universities joining in, users become more aware of the power of the multicast. Chief among its many applications is video conferencing. Many other applications are being developed and tested, including webcasting, distance education, or distance learning. We anticipate the number of institutions adopting this bandwidth conservation service to increase rapidly. Traffics generated from unicast still outnumber multicast by a very wide margin.

The National Center for Theoretical Sciences, established under the sponsorship of the National Science Council, Taiwan, is experimenting with the provision of video conferencing and broadcasting over TANet2. The Center, which is devoted to advancing research in mathematics and theoretical physics, has member scientists spread out throughout the island. The Center encourages cross-disciplinary and inter-regional cooperation. It also emphasizes international exchanges and global collaboration. With programs in a wide-ranging area, scholars affiliated with the Center find it inconvenient to attend the many gatherings. These include lectures by visiting scientists, both from overseas and from many locales in Taiwan, delivered at conferences, seminars and workshops. Making such sessions available to scientists and students who otherwise cannot attend is a wonderful undertaking. The Real System will be adopted for the initial development. When it is made available, the content is expected to encompass Number Theory, Dynamical Systems, Geometric Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Scientific Computation, High Energy Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, Mathematical Physics and Biophysics.

The database has about 40 records presently. It contains all the textual information concerning the sugar moiety of the GAGs and the structural information of the proteins each GAGs binds to. Information about chemical structure formula, metabolic pathways, distribution in the body is being collected by means of data-mining process. Knowledge discovery is a much-needed technique that yields useful information for researchers relying on these databases for predicting the protein structure or for designing drugs.

Before the Chi-Chi killer quake hit Taiwan at midnight, September 21, 1999 many observed significant changes in the water level in wells some distance away from the epicenter. These changes took place as early as 24 hours prior to the quake. The township of Chi-Chi is at the Chelungpu fault. After the quake and aftershocks, there was great displacement owing to ground motions. The maximum horizontal displacement was 7.1 m whereas the maximum vertical displacement was 4.5 m. Fluctuations in water level collected from about 50 wells were also very great. The level rose as much as 7 m and fell as much as 11 m. If these changes reflect a direct correlation, then the magnitude of fluctuations in groundwater level is potentially a good indicator of the severity of an earthquake. It also serves as a good warning signal. Ms. Chia-Chen Kuo at the NCHC is developing a web-based system that will take in real-time measurements from the wells and render them in virtual reality. In addition, the same system will be used to treat surface and subsurface data collected for the Chelungpu fault, rendering the datasets in 3D. The visualization system will be used for education and training for workers in hazard mitigation.

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