The Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles just got a new toy to play with. More accurately, 400 new toys and some accessories to go with them…
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is now using a Sun(TM) Grid Rack system, comprised of 400 Sun Fire(TM) x64 servers, Sun StorageTek(TM) solutions, Sun N1(TM) software and pre-integrated by Sun Customer Ready Systems, to process and analyze vast amounts of complex data in the pursuit of medical discoveries that could lead to new treatments for life-threatening and chronic diseases.
At the new Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, researchers are doing highly complex analyses of the proteins in patient blood samples in order to discover and develop treatments — for cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, high cholesterol and other diseases — that are based on an individual’s biochemical makeup and medical history. To undertake this task, Cedars-Sinai sought a supercomputer capable of massive computational power and data storage to process multiple terabytes of raw data daily and reveal patterns that could be correlated to clinical outcomes.
Cedars-Sinai chose Sun as the best solution for its processing, storage and backup requirements. The 400 Sun servers form a supercomputer in a compact footprint that perform huge volumes of statistical and data analysis. The system is aiming to generate four terabytes of data daily by 2007 — four times what was previously processed by the grid — and eight terabytes daily by 2008. The processing power enables researchers to analyze complex data sets in days rather than weeks or months and cross-compare data to uncover new disease connections.
This actually puts them in the top 500 supercomputing centers worldwide. Hopefully they’re able to put it to good use.
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