Ontario Centre for Genomic Computing installs 192 processor Origin supercomputerToronto 18 July 2001 The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund today announced the expansion of the Ontario Centre for Genomic Computing (OCGC). Using a 192-processor SGI Origin 3800 system with 178 GBbyte of memory and 2.7 tbyte of disk, the OCGC provides the world's largest publicly available computational supercomputer focused solely on biological research.
The recently installed upgrade represents a $25 million SGI deal with the
hospital, which funded the acquisition in part through support from the Ontario
Research and Development Challenge Fund.
The OCGC enables world-class research in the area of genomics by providing
scientists with a state-of-the-art computational platform to support current
and catalyze future biological research in Ontario. Research scientists use the
OCGC for biological and genomic research projects such as the discovery of new
human disease genes, protein modeling and projects to map the human genome. The
center is part of the Ontario Challenge Fund's $75 million investment in
genomic research over the next five years.
Acting as an application service provider, the OCGC offers independent research
scientists with federal and provincial grants access to the computational
platform via the Internet. A standard user allocation includes time and disk
space to meet their computing needs.
Once on the system, research scientists have access to a wide variety of
applications and services, including international biological databases,
bioinformatics training and research applications such as BLAST, HT-BLAST,
EMBOSS, TM-Finder and Clustal W.
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