A Contemporary Design for a Computing Science Academic Computing Facility: The Simon Fraser University Experiene

The design of a Computing Science Academic Computing Facility (CSACF) which accommodates research, instruction, and administration by the Simon Fraser University School of Computing Science is described. The facility is designed to meet the hardware and software requirements of graduate and undergraduate instruction in fundamental and applied computing science, and to meet the requirements of research into instructional technology and methodology. The facility design takes advantage of the decreasing price of microcomputer system hardware and software to replace nearly obsolete mainframe instructional computing equipment previously in use with computing equipment which is rapidly becoming standard in computing research and application. We believe that our computing facility concept is state of the art, modular, and cost-effective, and should prove to be of significant value to a wide variety of disparate computing science departments.