ACADEMIA

SGI Altix XE Cluster with eXludus Grid Optimizer Delivers 90 Percent Acceleration of BLASTn and 70 Percent Acceleration of HMMER: With clusters the fastest growing segment of the computer market in biosciences according to the IDC industry analyst report "HPC Market and Research Overview: 2006 and Beyond", SGI introduces the SGI BioCluster, a powerful and accelerated workflow solution for pharmaceutical, life sciences and higher education researchers. The SGI BioCluster is an SGI Altix XE cluster system with PBS Pro cluster management tools and the eXludus Grid Optimizer, a new multi-core capacity management technology that substantially boosts throughput in clusters and grids running workloads with tens, hundreds or thousands of concurrent users through its unique real-time job schedule optimization technology. Two life sciences software applications have been benchmarked by eXludus on the SGI BioCluster thus far, using a 64-processor configuration. There was a 70 percent performance acceleration of HMMER and 90 percent acceleration on BLASTn, compared to a SGI Altix XE cluster using PBS Pro only. "The high performance gains we achieved on in-house benchmarks are a result of the combination of our new Grid Optimizer, which is designed to increase the throughput efficiency of multi-core processors and prevent them from interfering with one another and the scalable architecture of the SGI Altix XE," said Benoit Marchand, founder and CEO of eXludus. "As we developed this technology we found that not only does performance increase, but performances of certain classes of applications accelerate tremendously, specifically bioinformatics, proteomics, animation and PDA chip design. In a nutshell, Grid Optimizer accelerates performance in many classes of applications and ensures the machines are used to their fullest capacity." As benchmarking continues, it is expected that as other life sciences applications are tested similar speed-ups will be achieved, greatly differentiating the SGI BioCluster from other clusters in productivity benefits and price-performance. "The SGI BioCluster is an ideal solution for pharmaceutical, biotech and university researchers seeking a turn-key workflow solution that will accelerate their genomics and proteomics work and easily integrate into their existing infrastructure," said Deepak Thakkar, Ph.D., BioSciences Segment Manager, SGI. "Clusters are the compute platform of choice of almost 40 percent of the total biosciences market and with the powerful BioCluster solution SGI will be delivering a system that will enable faster time to insight and discovery." The SGI BioCluster is available immediately through SGI and SGI value-added reseller channel. The system can be purchased with a 1, 2, or 3-year license, or as a 90-day trial version. The SGI BioCluster with the 64 Intel Xeon processors is the recommended configuration for high performance results. The system can also be configured with 16 or 32 processors. SGI customers who currently own an SGI Altix XE cluster system can purchase the eXludus Grid Optimizer with the same 1, 2, or 3 year license, or 90-day trial as well.