Computer and Software Infrastructure
Computer Hardware
Students and faculty in the Department of Geosciences have access to a modern Sparc 880 server networked to some 25 SUN Ultra workstations with 6 Tbytes of disk space. Students and faculty working on CAGE related projects and theses have access to a 48-node Xeon (2GHz) Beowulf cluster, 4 stand-alone PCs running Linux, and some additional 12 Tybtes of disk space. CAGE along with its sister air quality monitoring program (AQM) is also one of the members of the UH Sun Microsystem Center of Excellence which provides extensive computation facilities.
Commercial Software
Through the generosity of commercial software vendors and service companies, CAGE and the Department of Geosciences have onsite installations of state-of-the-art software products in seismic interpretation, processing, imaging, modeling, visualization, reservoir calibration, and reservoir simulation that exceeds that available to employees at most independent oil companies. Currently we have licenses to the following commercial software for use in education, as well as in faculty and student research:
Software Product |
Application |
Vendor |
Our Platform |
| Geoframe - including IESX, Basmap, Geo-office, Welpix, Seisclass, LPM | Seismic Interpretation, Geologic Mapping, Well-Log Analysis, and Classification | Geoquest | Unix |
| Voxelgeo | Seismic Interpretation | Paradigm Geophysical | Linux |
| Stratimagic | Seismic Classification | Paradigm Geophysical | Linux |
| Focus/Disco | Seismic Processing | Paradigm Geophysical | Linux and Unix |
| Power2d/Power3d | Prestack Depth Migration | Paradigm Geophysical | Linux |
| Petrel | Seismic Interpretation | Geoquest | PC |
| Strata | Impedance Inversion | Hampson-Russell | Unix |
| Ismap | Geostatistics | Hampson-Russell | Unix |
| Emerge | Classification | Hampson-Russell | Unix |
| GX-II | 2-D ray trace synthetics | GX Technology | Unix |
| GX-III | 3-D ray trace synthetics | GX Technology | Unix |
| Seisup | Seismic Processing | Geocenter | Unix |
| Petrosite? | Image log processing and interpretation | Halliburton | PC |
| Thinanywhere | Remote access to UNIX/Linux environment through PCs | Mercury International Technology | PC |
AGL Proprietary Software
In addition to commercial software students and faculty within CAGE and the Department of Geosciences have access to the following proprietary AGL-developed products. We provide source code and/or executable versions along with associated man pages of the following products to current sponsors of our AGL consortium. All data access, parameter definition, and display are made using the 'SEP' (Stanford Exploration Project) constructs.
Product |
Application |
Author(s) |
Platform |
| eps2d | 2-D Pseudospectral Elastic Modeling | Kwangjin Yoon and Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix under MPI |
| geom_attr | 3-D Geometric Attributes | Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix under MPI |
| reflector_shape | 3-D Curvature and Shape Attributes | Kurt J. Marfurt and Saleh al Dossary | Linux and Unix under MPI |
| csa | Composite Seismic Attribute Display | Michael Lin and Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix |
| spec_mp | Spectral Decomposition Using Matched Pursuit Ricker Wavelets | Jianlei Liu and Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix |
| fd2d_sc | 2-D Finite Difference Scalar Modeling | Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix under MPI |
| mc_vsp | Antialias Multicomponent VSP Separation | Katarina Jovanovic and Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix |
| tmig3d | 3-D Kirchhoff Prestack Time Migration | Kurt J. Marfurt and Cory Hoelting | Linux and Unix under MPI |
| interazim_coh | Interazimuth Coherence | Saleh al Dossary and Kurt J. Marfurt | Linux and Unix |
Physical Modeling
- Building a Physical Model
- Data Acquisition of Physical Modeling
- Elastic and Acoustic Properties of Physical Modeling Materials
- Physical Model Construction
Laboratory research tests geophysical techniques with data acquired from numerical and physical models. The physical modeling is accomplished using both a Water Tank System and a Solid Modeling System. Both of these systems are driven by Dell Pentium 3 computers connected to National Instruments indexers and data acquisition boards run under Labview. The Water Tank system enables studies to be made of acoustic wave problems and the Solid Modeling System is used for investigations of full elastic problems.
Milton B. Dobrin Reading Room
The Milton B. Dobrin Geophysical Reading Room incorporates a collection of over 5,000 research materials in addition to the archival SEG Reading Room. The Society of Exploration of Geophysicists also donated their reading room furniture to the new facility. The Dobrin Reading Room subscribes to a variety of research journals, including those published by the SEG, EAEG, ASEG, and the AAPG. Room holdingsare listed on an electronic catalog, and the facility has access to a CD-ROM database from GeoRef and SPE. The Reading Room is open to the public.
