insideHPC.com

The International Papaya Genome Consortium, led by researchers at the University of Hawaii have announced the completion of the Papaya Genome Sequencing Project. The two year effort utilized SGI Altix and InfiniteStorage products to sequence 372 million base pairs. This makes the disease-resistant “SunUp” papaya to be the first fruit and the first transgenic crop to be sequenced.

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University of California, San Diego scientists in collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center have successfully mapped the genome structure as a three-dimensional image. The image was a first of its kind. The research team was led by Cornelis Murre, professor of biology at UC San Diego and Steve Cutchin, senior scientist for visualization services at San Diego …

NEC and the Tokyo Institute of Technology are claiming they have developed technology that will allow supercomputers to breach 10 Petaflops.  Apparently, they have laid the groundwork using a network of optical interconnections between nests of chips.  The optical interconnects allow systems to perform chip-to-chip communication at 25 Gbps [No mention of latency].

The prototype converts electrical signals into optical signals

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Or are you just glad to see me? I couldn’t resist.

From SC Online comes news that HPC is helping swimmers set new world records by designing a better Speedo

A highly specialised computer modelling technique developed at The University of Nottingham has been instrumental in the design of a revolutionary new swimsuit which is now being hailed as the

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Intel has setup a series of interesting briefs on the history of the transistor and more specifically, transistor density in order to mark the 60th anniversary of the revolutionary device.

Intel Corporation on Dec. 16 celebrates the 60th anniversary of the transistor, the building block of today’s digital world. Invented by Bell Labs and

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From SGI yesterday:

Discovering the differences and changes within the genome that trigger disease is a priority for The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). To aid the non-profit research institute in their quest, TGen deployed technology from SGI (NASDAQ: SGIC) to more quickly analyze molecular profile data sets in their search for cancer cures.

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From HPCwire

Using supercomputers to compare portions of the human genome with those of other mammals, researchers at Cornell have discovered some 300 previously unidentified human genes, and found extensions of several hundred genes already known.

…More than 20,000 protein-coding genes have been identified, so the Cornell contribution, while significant, doesn’t dramatically change the number of known genes. What’s important, the

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Supercomputing online reports about how LSU’s Shell Coastal Environmental Modelling Laboratory (CEML) gave access to CEML’s supercomputing capabilities when Cyclone Sidr hit so that they could create storm surge models. These were given to Bangladesh emergency officials before Sidr made land, the storm surge maps were so detailed that they helped save countless lives.

Early on the morning

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Coverage at SC Online today:

Microsoft UK has launched a new competition aimed at improving lives through technology. The HPC Challenge is a High Performance Computing competition committed to helping the brightest minds in the UK innovatively solve the World’s toughest problems. The competition is open now to UK

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At the recent launch of the University of Manchester’s Aerospace Research Insitute (UMARI), the UK’s government Minister of State for Science and Innovation was shown a real time finite element analysis running on a 192 core Bull/Quadrics cluster. The cluster, normally part of the University’s central HPC service, was turned over exclusively to the demonstration, showing the effective …

BIO IT World points to an article at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute website that highlights a recent success researchers there had prediction structure of a naturally occurring globular protein using only its amino acid sequence.

A detailed understanding of a protein’s structure can offer scientists a wealth of information - revealing intricacies about the protein’s biological function and

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Honestly, is nothing sacred?

Following on the heels of yesterday’s reported attack on the Rubik’s cube is this posting over at Slashdot on a recent IEEE Spectrum article on using AI to attack the ancient Chinese game, Go, with its 10^60 possible endings.

Is conquering

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One of the results of the survey I did a couple months ago was that you guys told me you’d like to see more news on discoveries facilitated by HPC, so I’m always on the lookout for the new and novel to report back.

Submitted forthwith: the Rubik’s cube, solved in 26 moves or less.

BBC News carried a story earlier …

Story at SC Online this week about the Cell-BE being used in oil exploration in Houston:

IBM is supporting the UH Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program (M-OSRP) and its petroleum industry sponsors with a Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) system that represents a new generation of powerful supercomputers with substantial parallelism built in at the core level.

The Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation recently won $330,000 from the NSF to build a new special-purpose cluster.

…[Carlos Lousto, associate professor in the School for Mathematical Sciences] designed and built the computer using hardware from California-based Western Scientific. The 85 nodes that make this computer “super” each has its own dual processor, or four amounts

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