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TORONTO, CANADA -- Platform Computing Inc. announced that Princess Margaret Hospital, one of the world's top comprehensive cancer research, teaching and treatment facilities, has selected Platform LSF ActiveCluster(TM) to harness idle compute cycles from desktop PCs during off-peak hours. By utilizing the full power of its desktop PC resources, Princess Margaret Hospital will improve collaboration between the 1,500 scientists, technical staff, students and trainees in these institutes to dramatically accelerate cancer research serving as a basis for life-saving developments. Initially, Platform LSF ActiveCluster will link desktop computers from the Princess Margaret Hospital-affiliated Ontario Cancer Institute to boost compute power for large database searches and selected eHealth projects. Over the next few months, thousands more computers from across the three hospital sites making up University Health Network will be tapped to improve the computing power and reduce time to discovery in a variety of biomedical fields, ultimately improving patient care. Princess Margaret Hospital joins other life sciences organizations such as Entelos, Inc. and the France Telethon that have selected Platform LSF ActiveCluster to harness idle desktop cycles and accelerate time to discovery. Entelos is using Platform LSF ActiveCluster to enable its scientists to run faster simulations and accelerate the in silico (in computer) discovery and development of new drug therapies. In addition, Platform LSF ActiveCluster is linking 180,000 PCs across Europe for the France Telethon's 'Decrypthon' project to speed genetic research for muscular dystrophy. Beyond these examples, leading pharmaceutical firms around the world are integrating Platform LSF ActiveCluster with compute-intensive bioinformatics applications. "With Platform LSF ActiveCluster, we can tap unused resources in our network and boost our processing power by utilizing idle desktops," said Dr. Christopher Paige, vice president, Research, University Health Network, Princess Margaret Hospital. "Platform has extensive experience with life sciences firms around the world and understands our business requirements. We are excited about the potential for reducing time to discovery and improving patient care." "With Platform LSF ActiveCluster, Princess Margaret Hospital can create a 'virtual supercomputer,' which can run even more analyses, tackle more complex computations, and significantly shorten time to life-saving discoveries," said Yury Rozenman, Director, Life Sciences Business Development, Platform. "In most instances, these PCs are not fully utilized. During the day, the Platform LSF ActiveCluster client runs as a continuous background process, so the PC user sees no decrease in performance. During off-peak hours -- throughout the night, for example, when the computer power would not normally be used -- it can be used to accelerate cancer research." Platform LSF ActiveCluster adds distributed desktop processing to Platform's award-winning LSF suite and allows enterprises to extend processing power by taking advantage of unused desktop cycles and creating 'desktop clusters.' When a PC is idle or underutilized, it contacts the Platform LSF ActiveCluster server, which dispatches a suitable distributed computing job. Once the desktop completes the task, it returns results to the server and is assigned a new task. Platform will also implement additional components of Platform's distributed computing software to provide Princess Margaret Hospital with an integrated life sciences solution, including: Platform LSF(R) for enterprise wide workload management on dedicated research compute resources/clusters; Platform Intelligence for performance management to provide visibility into performance across resources, strategic and capacity planning and intelligence for asset management; Platform Clusterware(TM) for comprehensive cluster management to maximize the cost-effective, high performance potential of Linux clusters; Platform SiteAssure(TM) for resource management to ensure supply of critical compute resources; and Platform Grid computing solutions for enterprise and global computing capability. Further details on this collaboration will be announced at a later date. For more information visit www.platform.com