EARTH SCIENCES

Convey Computer announced that it is partnering with HPC cloud innovator, Nimbix, to deliver Convey's unique hybrid-core architecture and bioinformatics personalities as a cloud-based HPC solution. Nimbix, a new Convey customer, will deploy hybrid-core systems to accelerate informatics and discovery applications.

Convey has multiple solutions for big data -- most notably in bioinformatics and genome research. Convey personalities accelerate applications such as genome sequencing and alignment, giving researchers the ability to solve problems they previously could not. Because Convey's FPGA-based systems feature an adaptable architecture, customers are creating new personalities every day to attack specific problems they face.

Unlike other cloud infrastructure providers, Nimbix manages accelerated server platforms to speed up data processing for computationally intensive applications, such as bioinformatics, financial analytics, and graphics. In 2010, Nimbix announced its Nimbix Accelerated Compute Cloud, which puts efficient hardware technology, optimized for industry-specific applications, in the hands of customers wanting to solve big data challenges. Nimbix also is expanding its private cloud HPC clusters for customers who prefer dedicated environments for accelerating computing.

"With our cloud solutions, customers can leverage multiple accelerator technologies, including Convey's hybrid-core servers, for big data applications. We lower the barrier of access to the 'new HPC' via the cloud and deliver a more efficient and productive path to results," said Steve Hebert, co-founder of Nimbix.

Convey CEO and co-founder, Bruce Toal, said Convey believes that cloud services for bioinformatics will continue to grow because the cloud "optimizes access" to HPC's most innovative hardware and software solutions. "We are very excited to announce Nimbix as a customer and cloud partner. By bringing our accelerated bioinformatics algorithms and hybrid-core system performance to the cloud, scientists and researchers have another option available for managing and analyzing massive amounts of research data."

The hybrid-core architecture is the ideal complement to data-intensive cloud computing environments because Convey systems combine powerful, reconfigurable processing elements with a supercomputer-inspired memory subsystem. Big data applications, which depend upon random access patterns to large memory spaces, experience severe memory performance limitations on cache-based servers. Convey's highly parallel memory subsystem allows application-specific logic to have over 8,000 simultaneous memory transactions in flight, significantly increasing effective memory bandwidth over cache-based memory systems.