June 16, 2011
SGI’s Altix UV 1000 “Anakyklosis” at the Technical University of Denmark is being used to enable researchers to find new genes and proteins that could benefit future biotechnology initiatives to back industrial processes.
The system provides large shared memory for researchers to tackle projects in metagenomics, an area which involves far larger data sets than general human genome research would require.
According to Thumas Sicheritz-Ponten, director of the metagenomics research project at the University, the limitations in memory were showstoppers for this type of work in the past. He notes, however, that the SGI super Anakyklosis “can hold the equivalent of 2500 human genomes in its working memory at once, so it opens up new opportunities for systems biology research.”
According to one of the lead researchers on the project, Nikolaj Blom, “The need for larger and faster computers has become very urgent due to the development of the metagenomics research area…this deals with mapping the entire genome content of bacterial communities, such as those found in the deep oceans, in wastewater or our own gut. The resulting amount of data is several thousand times larger than the entire human genome.”
The research being conducted on the SGI machine could help reduce dependence on fossil fuels. According to the researchers, by finding ways to produce chemicals and other industrial components out of organic materials, which will lead to a broader base of sustainable raw materials to work from.
Full story at NewElectronics
In a recent solicitation, the NSF laid out needs for furthering its scientific and engineering infrastructure with new tools to go beyond top performance, Having already delivered systems like Stampede and Blue Waters, they're turning an eye to solving data-intensive challenges. We spoke with the agency's Irene Qualters and Barry Schneider about..
Read more...
Large-scale, worldwide scientific initiatives rely on some cloud-based system to both coordinate efforts and manage computational efforts at peak times that cannot be contained within the combined in-house HPC resources. Last week at Google I/O, Brookhaven National Lab’s Sergey Panitkin discussed the role of the Google Compute Engine in providing computational support to ATLAS, a detector of high-energy particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Read more...
The Xeon Phi coprocessor might be the new kid on the high performance block, but out of all first-rate kickers of the Intel tires, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) got the first real jab with its new top ten Stampede system.We talk with the center's Karl Schultz about the challenges of programming for Phi--but more specifically, the optimization...
Read more...
05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.
04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.
In this demonstration of SGI DMF ZeroWatt disk solution, Dr. Eng Lim Goh, SGI CTO, discusses a function of SGI DMF software to reduce costs and power consumption in an exascale (Big Data) storage datacenter.
The Cray CS300-AC cluster supercomputer offers energy efficient, air-cooled design based on modular, industry-standard platforms featuring the latest processor and network technologies and a wide range of datacenter cooling requirements.