Systems and Graphics Lab

The Systems and Graphics Laboratory (Systems and Graphics Lab), in room 205 of the Science and Innovation Center, is where students bring 3D worlds, games and computer vision to life. It’s a teaching lab for advanced courses, with powerful graphics workstations that run the same game engines and technical software used in industry.

Courses

The Systems and Graphics Lab is used for advanced courses such as:

• CSC 171A/269 Computer Graphics and CSC 172/291R Real-Time Rendering
• CSC 160 Introduction to Game Development
• CSC 173/279 Computer Vision
• CSC 110 Introduction to Computer Architecture and CSC 153/286 Advanced Computer Architecture (the CSC 110A lab component meets in the Architecture Lab)
• CSC 112/256 Operating Systems

Specifications

Every workstation has a dedicated NVIDIA graphics card, so students can build and render 3D scenes, run game engines and process images and video at their own seats.

• Workstations: 32 student workstations and an instructor station. The Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tower workstations have an Intel Core i7 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, 32 GB of memory and solid-state storage.
• Displays: 27-inch Lenovo ThinkVision monitors.
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows.
• Software includes Unity for game development, MATLAB with the Computer Vision Toolbox, and FlexSim for simulation, along with VirtualBox and remote-access tools such as PuTTY, Cygwin, Cisco AnyConnect and the VMware Remote Console.
• Data Center resources: Students can reach resources hosted in the Data Center, such as their course, project and research virtual machines, directly from the lab’s workstations.

Access & Help

• Getting in: For access to the lab outside class, contact the department.
• Virtual machines: Virtual machines for courses, projects and research run in the Data Center. The Virtual Machine FAQ explains how to reach them.
• Tutoring: Tutoring for Computer Science courses is in SIC 226.