Computing: Facilities and Resources

Computing Facilities and Resources

The theoretical computing environment at the University of Toronto is particularly strong. In addition to departmental computers, we share a high-performance parallel-computing centre for theoretical astrophysics with CITA. This facility has been used to carry out some of the largest, most accurate N-body simulations done to date, although it has many other applications, ranging from the dynamics of molecules to the dynamics of the universe. Members of the department also have access to the Compute Canada High-Performance Computing Platforms, such as SciNet at the University of Toronto, the largest academic computing platform in Canada.

The Department and CITA are recognized major centres in the numerical study of dynamical systems ranging from hydrogen molecules, to comets in the solar system, to star clusters, to spiral waves in galaxies, to colliding galaxies, to the large scale clustering of galaxies. Various workers at the University of Toronto have developed some of the most powerful numerical techniques in use today. Major software packages from NASA, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and elsewhere are maintained on the departmental computers.

The Department maintains an undergraduate computing laboratory. There are 16 laptops running linux.