Celera Genomics, Sandia Labs and Compaq team to develop life sciences computing solutions

The project aims to develop next generation software and computer hardware solutions that will be specifically designed to meet the demands of computational biology and a full range of life sciences a



The project aims to develop next generation software and computer hardware solutions that will be specifically designed to meet the demands of computational biology and a full range of life sciences applications. The three groups will work together to increase computing capability with the aim of achieving a trillion operations per second (100TeraOPS). It is hoped that through sharing some of the computing technology developed by Sandia, Celera and Compaq, it will be possible to reach the petacruncher's (1000TeraOPS) level.

The collaborating organizations believe this level of cooperation is vital to meet the increases in performance required for emerging genomics and proteomics applications at affordable prices.

The next stage of the biotechnological revolution that has started by the Human Genome Program will be fueled by the successful marriage of molecular biology with high performance computing science, said Secretary Richardson from the Department of Energy.

The key aspect of this R&D relationship is the simultaneous provision of algorithmic support, design of actual application software, and development of the system platform by three organizations with world-class competence in their respective areas, said Bill Blake, Vice President of High Performance Technical Support at Compaq. This effort is a direct response to the challenge by Celera's president J. Craig Venter, who said that even the most powerful of today's supercomputers do not meet the needs of his company's work in the genomic area. Our intent with this alliance is to apply the same full system modeling approach to bioscience that has been so successfully applied to physical sciences in the DOE/NNSA Stockpile Stewardship program.

The alliance plans to use Compaq Alpha processors connected in parallel configuration with extremely high bandwidth and low latency mesh interconnects. Compaq already manufacturers a number of supercomputers, the AlphaServer SC series. It is expected that the three companies will focus on future generations of this series, with a goal to create a prototype by 2004.

Just three years ago, the computational needs of biology were thought to be minor and irrelevant to the computing industry, said Craig Venter, President and CSO at Celera. Today, biologists are setting the pace of development for the industry.