ICR buys 768 processors of SGI 3800 systemsKyoto 11 October 2001 The Institute for Chemical Research (ICR) at Kyoto University, which has supported chemistry studies of all kinds since early in the 20th century, has become the site of one of the biggest supercomputers in Japan with the purchase of a 768-CPU parallel SGI system. ICR will use the system to further its work in bioinformatics and computational chemistry research.
The recently signed contract calls for delivery of two SGI 3800
systems, with 512 CPUs dedicated to computational chemistry and 256 CPUs for
computational biology. In addition, SGI is delivering an SGI Onyx 3400
visualization system with 32 CPUs, along with an SGI TP9400 35TB storage
system. Installation is taking place this fall, with operations set to begin in
January 2002.
Over the past decade, SGI has delivered a variety of systems to ICR for
genomics research and has helped ICR launch the GenomeNet Database Service, a
group of genomics databases for researchers around the world. GenomeNet, which
includes the influential Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG),
consists of a suite of databases requiring terabytes of storage and associated
software for maintenance and analysis.
SGI Japan Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI, has provided high-level
support and dedicated bioinformatics technical staff expertise to Japan's
emerging bioinformatics industry since 1997. The staff, drawn from SGI Japan's
Research and Development Solution Systems team, provides a spectrum of customer
services to key SGI research lab customers throughout Japan. The team builds
specialized software and support services for ensuring access to daily updates
of the most popular bioinformatics databases, such as GenBank, EMBL and
SwissProt, in order to ensure the highest performance of customer
installations.
SGI's rich history with ICR also includes funding an upcoming three-year
professor position and training course within ICR's Bioinformatics Laboratory.
A related bioinformatics program, to be offered from 2002 to 2005, will be
developed by the professorship candidate, with hiring currently in progress.
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