HAMBURG, GERMANY– June 22, 2011 [International Supercomputing Conference Stand 850] – Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO), provider of a next-generation shared data decentralization platform, today announced that its technology has been utilized to realize significant performance improvements in MySQL database queries for bioinformatics research. The Protein Data Bank (PDB) research is being conducted at the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Researchers at SDSC noted that replacing hard drive disks (HDDs) with Fusion-io technology in their database infrastructure reduced query times from 30 minutes to three minutes.

Fusion’s ioMemory technology is being utilized by the SDSC, an organized research unit of UC San Diego, in its data-intensive computing initiatives. As part of these efforts, researchers are using the technology to advance research on the Protein Data Bank, the world’s most comprehensive repository for three-dimensional structures of large molecules and nucleic acids. The research carried out for the PDB serves as a foundation for accelerating the development of life-saving drugs, synthetic proteins used in medicine and other treatments for illnesses.

“As SDSC strives to serve as a center for research excellence, we focus heavily on evaluating how flash-based technologies can improve scientific discovery,” said Allan Snavely, Associate Director of SDSC and co-Principal Investigator of the Center’s upcoming data-intensive high-performance computing (HPC) system, Gordon, which is currently in development. “Through our research, we are finding that storage memory products like those offered by Fusion-io are considerably faster than hard drive disks for many large memory and data-intensive problems, and that flash-based storage memory has the potential to make supercomputing-level results accessible outside the traditional user base.”

Using Fusion’s server-deployed technologies, researchers were able to reduce the time required to conduct complex MySQL database queries that determine relationships between proteins and the effects proteins can have on each other. Using traditional hard drive disks, a query analyzing more than 200 million protein structures took 30 minutes.

“With Fusion’s shared data decentralization technologies – which place the storage memory medium right next to the processor to significantly reduce latency and increase processing speed – the same query took just three minutes,” said Robert Sinkovits, SDSC computational scientist and Gordon Applications Lead.

Spencer Bliven, a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Department at UC San Diego working with Allen Snavely on the research, said, “The PBD is helping us gain a more theoretical and practical understanding of the foundations of biological science. With the reduced query times I’ve seen in conducting tests with Fusion’s ioMemory technology, I’m able to stay more focused on my research. This allows the scientific discovery process to be more spontaneous and greatly helps me in eliminating potential errors.”

The computer used to realize the performance gains includes two quad-core Intel Xeon E5530 2.40 GHz processors and 48 GB of DDR3-1066 memory. It includes four 320 GB ioDrives mounted and configured as a single 1.2 TB RAID 0 device running an XFS file system.

“Storing crucial data in the server where it is processed can greatly accelerate the analysis of large data sets to enable new scientific discoveries,” said Neil Carson, Chief Technology Officer of Fusion-io. “It’s inspiring to see how SDSC is leveraging the performance gains and reduced latency made possible by Fusion-io technology to advance complex biological research that serves as the foundation for many improvements in science and medicine.”

About Fusion-io

Fusion-io has pioneered a next generation storage memory platform for shared data decentralization that significantly improves the processing capabilities within a datacenter by relocating process-critical, or "active", data from centralized storage to the server where it is being processed, a methodology referred to as data decentralization. Fusion’s integrated hardware and software solutions leverage non-volatile memory to significantly increase datacenter efficiency and offers enterprise grade performance, reliability, availability and manageability. Fusion’s data decentralization platform can transform legacy architectures into next generation datacenters and allows enterprises to consolidate or significantly reduce complex and expensive high performance storage, high performance networking and memory-rich servers. Fusion’s platform enables enterprises to increase the utilization, performance and efficiency of their datacenter resources and extract greater value from their information assets.

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Source: Fusion-io