ACADEMIA

SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- Linux NetworX announced today that Tularik Inc., (NASDAQ: TLRK) is using a Linux NetworX Evolocity™ cluster supercomputer to boost datamining performance by 75x for drug development. Tularik, a biopharmaceutical company, relies on the Linux NetworX cluster to accelerate its drug discovery efforts by quickly identifying gene combinations behind diseases in the areas of cancer, immunology and metabolic disorders. Using the genomics information processed by the cluster, Tularik expects to develop pharmaceuticals that regulate gene expression. In a two month time period, Tularik accomplished the cross comparison between the mouse genome and the human genome, a significant scientific feat to further understand human disease. “The Linux NetworX cluster provides a performance increase of 75x over our previous system, enabling us to complete the genome comparison in a short amount of time,” said Bruce Ling, director of bioinformatics at Tularik. “The information from this comparison gives us a competitive advantage and wouldn’t have been possible without the Linux NetworX cluster.” The massive amount of data computation inherent in drug design typically requires the power of a supercomputer-class system. Cluster technology is a method of linking multiple computers, or compute nodes, together to form a powerful, unified system. Linux NetworX clusters can match the performance of traditional supercomputers for a fraction of the cost. “Our drug target identification efforts depend on the information processed by the Linux NetworX cluster, so it is imperative that the cluster is powerful, reliable and easy-to-manage,” said Ling. “The Linux NetworX cluster provides the power we need for genome scale data mining and data management.” To help manage the 150-processor cluster, ICE Box and ClusterWorX, cluster management tools from Linux NetworX, are being used to monitor each processor in the cluster and notify administrators of any potential system irregularities.