Computer Facility:

The current computer facilities in the department of Petroleum Engineering consist of two computer Labs. The first computer lab is mainly for undergraduate students use. It consists of 15 IBM-compatible PC's. Each PC consists of a Pentium IV 1.7 G Hz processor with 500 Mb of memory and 45 Gb hard disk, high-density floppy drives, a super VGA color monitor and an Ethernet communication card. Four network color and black and white printers are available for student use. The second computer lab is for graduate students research applications. It consists of 2 SUN workstations (ultra-80), and a SUN server (4000 ENTERPRISE). The lab is also currently equipped with 3 Eclipse 100, 200 and 300 reservoir simulators, donated by Schlumberger.

Schlumberger has also donated Geoframe, which is geological modeling software. This particular research lab has also 4 modules of CMG reservoir simulator. These are:

1. IMEX which is a black oil simulator
2. GEM that is a compositional simulator.
3. STAR, which is a thermal simulator.
4. WINPROP that is a phase behavior package.

This lab is also equipped with a CANON CLC-1150 color printer/copier and scanner. Computers in both labs are connected to a computer network on Kuwait University campus that permits communication with virtually any computer system in the world. These computers, networked to the university mainframe computers, provide the major computing capabilities for scientific applications. The computer network allows not only user communication with other users on the network, but also servicing of requests from other computer systems in the department to promote the sharing of resources. As an example, PC-based systems in the department are able to share disk and printer resources with the University machines on campus in other departments through the use of network connections. After the liberation of Kuwait, KUCS purchased aVAX-9000/420 VP super mainframe and an IBM-ES-9121/440 mainframe to replace the earlier equipment lost during the invasion. Recently the VAX-9000/420 VP machine has been replaced by an AlphaServer-4100 machine, and the IBM-ES-9121/440 has been replaced by IBM-ES-9672-RS32 machine. In addition, many other AlphaServer machines running Digital Tru64 Unix and Windows NT machines have been installed which replace the functionality of IBM-ES-9121/440 machines. The most significant advantage of these machines are their increased performance compared to conventional mainframes, and the reduced overall price. The department is connected to these machines by a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Local Area Network (LAN) via a Cisco Router connected to the backbone. The LAN includes, IBM-compatible PC(s), Compaq desktops and servers, Macintosh and SUN Workstations. KU Network is connected to international networks through Internet service provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the USA. The department provides copies of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power Point, Visual Fortran and other related software.