Fremont, California, USA
April 24, 2012
The Genome Analysis Centre in Norwich, UK leverage SGI® UV™ to accelerate complex problem analysis
SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), the trusted leader in technical computing, today announced that researchers in the compute-intensive field of biotechnology research are continuing to make breakthrough progress with their selection of the SGI® UV™ high performance computing (HPC) system. SGI UV is the leading scalable shared memory architecture in the industry today, and is being deployed to tackle many of the world’s most difficult and complex compute
challenges. The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in the UK is an example.
In the UK, TGAC specializes in genomics and bioinformatics with a focus on the analysis and interpretation of plant, animal and microbial genomes. Launched in July 2009, TGAC has steadily grown its team to over 50 members, with half of the institute working in a bioinformatics capacity to interpret, assemble and analyze datasets generated from the sequencers housed in their lab. Located on the Norwich Research Park in Norwich, UK, TGAC receives strategic funding from the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
"SGI UV was chosen because of the product's superior performance and scalability, reflecting the company's support and experience in high-end, high performance computing," said Paul Fretter, science computing team leader at the Norwich Bioscience Institutes. "The main benefit of using such a system is the ability to assemble and analyze large and complex multi-billion base genome sequences in memory."
TGAC researchers have been using an SGI UV 100 since early 2011. SGI Professional Services was involved in helping the centre drive the implementation of fusion_IO SSD and the integration of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. At the time of installation, this was the world's largest Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 6 system. The centre is also due to receive the world's largest shared memory system for genome research when it initiates service of the future generation SGI UV system powered by Intel® MICseries processors.
"The SGI UV family is quickly becoming the de facto industry standard for customers tackling some of the world's most complex big data challenges in the field of life sciences," said Rick Rinehart, senior vice president of services at SGI. "The versatility, flexibility and scalability of the UV system make it the proper foundation for a complete compute and storage solution for these massive data intensive challenges."
SGI, the trusted leader in technical computing, is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information
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