MANUFACTURING

Entropia, Inc., the leading provider of PC grid computing solutions, announced that Evotec OAI AG, a partner for integrated high-value-added drug discovery to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, has deployed Entropia’s DCGrid™ for additional compute power in lieu of purchasing a more costly high performance computing solution. DCGrid is a powerful and cost-effective PC grid computing platform that provides high performance computing capabilities by aggregating the unused processing cycles from networks of existing Windows-based PCs. “What appealed to us most about a PC grid computing solution is that we grab the spare computing power of the PCs we already have deployed, without incurring the substantially greater capital outlay of acquiring a large Linux cluster system. We are now able to screen in excess of 20,000 compounds a day in-silico in high quality docking studies. This is a 20-fold increase in our computational capability and will greatly enhance the speed of our drug discovery efforts,” said Joe Mernagh, chief knowledge officer at Evotec OAI. Mernagh continues, “Our computational scientists now have massive computing capacity available for use on our customer programmes. Someone calculated the potential compute power using 250 of our PCs and checked a Web site that lists the world’s top 500 supercomputers. It surprised us to find out that a company our size would have the equivalent compute power to rank us in this list.” “Most users don’t know it (DCGrid) is there, or, if they do, they’ve forgotten it’s running. From an IT perspective we’ve had no complaints. The administrative overhead on the IT group of keeping the grid active is negligible. Now that we are into production mode, we hardly know that the grid is there,” said Stuart Simmonds, IT systems manager at Evotec OAI. “Entropia’s commitment and responsiveness during the installation was unsurpassed. Our overall impression of Entropia is very positive and working with them has been a good experience. Entropia did what it said it would do.” Evotec OAI purchased Entropia for the strength of its PC grid solution, domain expertise in the discovery and pharmaceutical markets, and the enterprise-focused business model. In the end the enterprise grid solution available from Entropia won out over the Internet PC grid products available elsewhere. Evotec OAI was confident that selecting Entropia would give them an added advantage for their in-house PC grid solution and meet their goals of increasing productivity and throughput. The more Evotec OAI uses their grid, the more their realization has grown that, while applications can be run on many systems, making a grid usable requires more than just simply deploying applications. The management features of the grid are just as important. Entropia’s expertise in these areas has reinforced why Evotec OAI chose Entropia. “Evotec OAI is a service company whose ability to deliver high quality scientific results faster than other companies makes it more competitive in the marketplace. Realizing a 20-fold increase in throughput is quite significant for an enterprise in any economy, let alone the one facing most companies today,” said Bill Philbin, chief operating officer at Entropia. “Evotec OAI has clearly demonstrated that even a modest grid of a few hundred PCs can deliver superior performance and compute power. Deploying a PC grid is the answer for today’s budget-sensitive enterprises that seek additional compute power without the price. PC grids are real today.”