With donation, U. will place Intel inside hi-tech network

The University will be bombarded with $1.9 million worth of top-of-the-line computers over the next three years as part of a major donation of goods and services by Intel Corp. The donation, announced October 16, will come in the form of "300-megahertz Pentium II computers, which will be connected in an active-switched network currently being built by researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Science," according to a University press release. The network -- being created as part of the University's ENIAC 2000 project -- will be used in computing projects spanning campus in fields such as accounting, computer and information science, finance, physics and robotics. The contribution was not specific to Penn -- 25 U.S. universities received similar grants as part of Intel's "Technology for Education 2000 program." According to an Intel press release, grants were awarded based on "academic excellence of the university, the potential beneficial impact of the grant to students and faculty, and the commitment of the institution to support the grant objectives." "The grant program is designed to support university research and curriculum development at key universities," an Intel press release said. Among the other schools receiving the grant were Stanford, Columbia, Rice, Duke, Harvard and Yale universities. For Yale, the donation was a "mixed blessing, reopening a bitter debate over whether the university is moving away from Apple Macintosh," according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. According to the October 16 article, the grant was announced just after a widely circulated letter from Yale encouraged students to purchase Windows PC computers. After June of the year 2000, the university will no longer guarantee support for Macintoshes. Written by Yale computing director Dan Updegrove --Ea former top Penn computing official --Ethis letter provoked the attention of Mac advocates who believed there was a connection between the Intel grant and the promotion of PCs. The announcement of the grant at Penn raised the possibility that a similar uprising would occur here. But Ira Winston, project director for the Technology for Education 2000 program, assured that this was not a cause for alarm, as the grant is not at all related to personal computer use. "Most of the money is going towards building a scalable computer," Winston said. "This isn't a machine that's going to be on anybody's desk." Winston added that he believes Yale's grant was unrelated to their move toward phasing out Macs. "In reality, their grant looks just like ours," he said. "The Mac community was angry at the attempt to phase out Macs -- the Intel grant became a rallying point." The same accusation cannot be made at Penn. Both Macs and personal computers are supported, Winston said. In fact, before coming to Penn in the fall, freshmen receive a pamphlet from the Computer Connection, along with a letter from their home school, advertising and offering support for both Macs and PCs. "We didn't take a stand in our letter to students like Yale did," Winston said. "Our policy is to let the market decide." Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing James O'Donnell agreed with Winston. "Penn supports both Mac and Intel-based systems," O'Donnell said. "The Intel grant has nothing to do with Penn's overall computing policies or environment."