Historically, the School has been known for the quality of its equipment provision to staff, research students and undergraduates. This reputation is being maintained by a consistent policy of putting state-of-the-art equipment on staff and research student desks and giving high priority to the provision of extensive research facilities, notably a Virtual Working Environment laboratory and an AI laboratory, providing elaborate multimedia and communications equipment based around a Silicon Graphics Challenge multiprocessor machine. Visualisation and image capture is supported by a wide variety of cameras, display and hard-copy devices. Routine provision is standardising either on Unix-based colour workstations (both Sun and Silicon Graphics) or on top-end PCs. Quality networking is a School (and University) speciality, with high bandwidth connections into all platforms. Currently, this is based around an FDDI fibre ring, with progressive implementation of a 155 Mbps ATM service. This high bandwidth facility naturally extends into national and international domains.
Undergraduate teaching is currently supported by two large laboratories of Silicon Graphics Indigo and Indy Unix colour workstations, giving first (and later) year students access to the very latest products the market can provide. There is also a range of modern PCs available, notably in a recently upgraded MSc laboratory. Undergraduates also have access to the facilities provided by the University Computing Service; in addition to the many on-site laboratories, there is a growing number of clusters provided in off-campus halls of residence and university flats.
The School makes use of very good access to the full range of facilities provided by the University, a range too wide to enumerate but including several laboratories of Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations, some hundreds of PCs and various special-purpose processors. There are also well-established links into the University Media Services, providing a very high quality output via a full range of electronic, video, audio, photographic and paper media.
The University of Leeds has always been among the best-provided institutions in the country. The School within it will be maintaining its position in the forefront of computing departments, providing a showcase of state-of-the-art equipment, and a model upon which others will base their own computing development.