The computing resources of the Sanger Institute at Hinxton, near Cambridge, are almost unfathomable. Three rooms are filled with walls of blade servers and drives, and there is a fourth that is kept fallow, and for the moment full of every sort of debris: old Sun workstations, keyboards, cases and cases of backup tapes – even a dishwasher. But the fallow room is an important part of the centre’s preparations. Things are changing so fast that they can have no idea what they will be required to do in a year’s time.
Basically, DNA Is a Computing Problem
February 28, 2008