In its current structure, Electronic and Computer Services (ECS) is the amalgamation of the former Engineering Computer Laboratory and Electronic Services. These two entities were formed in the 1965 to 1968 timeframe and separately served the College of Engineering until about 1990; at which time the two organizations were combined into the Center for Electronic Design, Communications and Computing. In 2003, the organization was renamed and today operates as ECS. For the most part, the elements of ECS still retain their individual identities and form many of the valuable and productive functions they’ve performed for over 40 years.

Summary

The integration of computing, networking, training, and design services benefits the College and our students by leveraging these combined services into an organization that meets the vital needs of day-to-day administrative functions, while enhancing the experiential engineering education of students desiring to achieve World-Class status as engineers who will make a positive global impact. Today, ECS is focused on its mission and goals of excellence and service to the College of Engineering, Penn State, the United States, and the global community.

The Engineering Computer Laboratory

The Engineering Computer Laboratory started with an EAI 680 Mainframe Analog Computer that was coupled to a Digital Equipment Corporation’s PDP–10 Digital Computer with core memory and TTY terminals. As time passed, the organization grew in both systems maintained and services offered; a few examples follow:

• Systems included IBM and VAX Mainframes and a Harris Vision System
• Systems provided Centralized College Computing Services for faculty, students, and staff
• Student Labs were added in EE West
• As General Computing became the norm, Staff Applications Training entered the picture
• In the mid 1980’s, ECL became responsible for installing & operating the College’s Network Cabling and Hardware Infrastructure

By the 1990s, the demands for networking services and applications requiring bandwidth stressed the network infrastructure within the College’s 13 connected academic buildings. Increased stresses on the available infrastructure let to the deployment of the then state-of-the-art Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networking equipment. By 2001, the central IT group announced the termination of ATM connectivity and the College migrated to a more secure and distributed Ethernet-centric networking architecture that included elements to enhance performance and secure computing mechanisms.

Demand for bandwidth availability grew with increased application usage, a corresponding increase in College computing resources, and the explosion in email and web-based applications/services; the latter two elements brought with them the undesirables such as viruses, worms, and malware. In 2007 and 2008, ECS and the College undertook a major initiative to architect, define, and plan for the deployment of a new high-speed, more resilient, responsive and secure network infrastructure to support a total of 26 buildings. The vision for this new design established unprecedented goals for performance, system lifecycle and security. While not all systems’ elements have been procured, the College’s new network architecture design plans are moving forward as the financial environment permits.

Two key elements drove the need for increased network performance:

1. The growth in computing assets and the user base
2. A significant increase in the number of applications and the need to provide educational services for these applications

Personnel in ECS’ Support and Training Services cover the nucleus of services offered in communications and computing support for Engineering’s faculty and staff. Operating Systems and applications training support are the focus of their services.

Support Services’ responsibilities have morphed and expanded over the years to meet the College’s needs. In the early years, personnel maintained the central computer support labs and systems/applications that resided on mainframe computers. As file sharing, applications’ distributions, email, and web browsing entered higher education computing environments, the services expanded to support these activities. In addition, the College migrated from a centralized mainframe environment to distributed server architecture; support transitioned from primarily maintaining a terminal operating environment for users to one that includes today’s desktop and laptop pervasive operational environment.

Since the beginning of computing applications’ availability, there has always been a need to provide faculty, staff, and students with an applications’ training environment. Training personnel maintain on-demand, on-line, one-on-one, and classroom training on contemporary office productivity software. Their exceptional proficiency in these types of applications continues to enable the customer base to rapidly assimilate the knowledge required for effective software usability.

Electronic Services

Electronic Services was formed for the purpose of providing electronics, mechanical instrumentation, and signal processing systems for the College and University researchers’ support needs. Because of the nature of the design requirements and professional engineering staff, the services of the organization were based on a fee-for-services model. Over the years, faculty and staff continued to provide their design expertise to varied College/University research programs; numerous funded projects were performed for both industrial and government agencies. The most notable past projects include the following:

• The first Penn State heart pacemaker
• The first in-car Fuel Consumption Monitoring Computer and Carburetor Control system for Volvo
• Rocket borne payload designs, construction, testing, launch assistance, and data reduction/analysis support
• Proof of concept and prototype development of a Microwave Measurements and Test System (MMTS) for the U.S. Army
• Space shuttle and satellite payload development and flight support
• Over 20 years of gimbal development and control system designs in support of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
• Design, development, and testing of Time Delay Reflectrometer (TDR) computer and PCI cards
• Ultrasonic thickness testing system

Throughout the years, the Design Group, now Integrated Design Services, continued the tradition of supporting the College’s primary goal of educating World-Class Engineers. The number of available funded projects during the early years constrained student participation to one to three students. By 2003, the organization benefitted from diversifying its customer base, resulting in the ability to support a greater number of students. Today, ECS consistently provides real-world engineering project experiences for eight to twelve students within an academic year and during summers.

The breadth and depth of today’s projects is exemplified through the following circuit, system, and software development initiatives:

• Video processing
• Night vision image processing
• Camera hardware interfacing
• Joy-stick control of gimbals and design concepts for flexible gimbals
• Field programmable gate array (FPGA) algorithm development and programming
• Autonomous surface vehicle design, development, and testing
• High performance computing algorithm development
• Socially responsible engineering initiatives that improve connectivity, technology, and the socioeconomic well-being of developing nations while simultaneously reaching those less fortunate areas of the United States

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