The Buffalo News

MASSIVE COMPUTER INSTALLED AT UB

Published on September 4, 2002
Author:    FRED O. WILLIAMS - News Business Reporter
© The Buffalo News Inc.

Technology star Michael Dell on Tuesday helped the University at Buffalo unveil the supercomputer that will power its bioinformatics research center, making Western New York the home of one of the most powerful number-crunchers anywhere.

The $13 million "cluster" of 2,000 Dell servers, each containing two processors, makes UB the No. 6 supercomputer site in the world, according to a list compiled by Gunter Ahrendt Purchasing Consulting. "This should have a great benefit to the Buffalo area, but more broadly to society in general," said Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corp. in Austin.

All the computing power is focused on one project -- deciphering the structure of proteins that are encoded by the human genome. The task -- led by Jeffrey Skolnick, head of UB's Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics -- is supposed to lay the groundwork for new drugs, treatments and diagnostic tools in years to come.

For now, the Dell cluster is raising eyebrows at other, better-known research institutions.

"Some people here are envious," said Thomas Coleman, director of Cornell University's supercomputing Theory Center, whose total power is about half that of UB's new machine.

In addition to Michael Dell, UB's announcement was attended by Nobel laureate Herbert Hauptman; Rep. John LaFalce, D-Town of Tonawanda; County Executive Joel A. Giambra; and Mayor Anthony M. Masiello, among other community and scientific leaders.

"This is a very important project for Western New York," Giambra said. "All of us are putting a lot of stock in the opportunities in bioinformatics." He and other local leaders are hoping for an economic lift from bioinformatics research dollars and potential spinoff ventures in drug development.

The Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics was announced by Gov. George E. Pataki last year, backed by $290 million in state, federal and corporate funding. Groundbreaking on a
building in the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus is expected this fall.

UB President William R. Greiner called the installation of the Dell cluster the center's technological kickoff.

Stacked 40 high in metal racks, the Dell servers stand like a geometric forest in a high-security room at UB's North Campus, connected by two miles of wiring and cooled by a 150-ton air conditioner. Data links tie the machine to the medical campus in Buffalo.

While Dell sold its PowerEdge servers to UB in a "buy-sell relationship," Michael Dell said the company also contributed resources to making certain that the large number of servers could work together. Technicians set up the system at a nearby site as a trial run before installing the cluster in UB's dedicated room, according to the company.

The equipment joins computers from Sun Microsystems, IBM Corp., SGI and Compaq at UB's Center for Computational Research. When the supercomputer center was announced in 1999, its two main machines had a total power of 60 billion operations per second. By comparison, the Dell cluster can perform a top end of 5.8 trillion operations a second, or "teraflops."

Few academic research sites can claim similar computing power today, although upgrades under way elsewhere will soon make "tera-scale" computing commonplace on campuses, experts said.

A widely cited supercomputer list at www.top500.org doesn't include UB, having been updated most recently in June. However, its rankings of other sites indicate that the power of the Dell cluster puts UB among the top-ranked institutions.

"In order to play in this game, you need tremendous computing power," Skolnick said. In bioinformatics, the game is to determine the structure of proteins that are critical to cellular functions, based on their genetic sequences as determined by the Human Genome Project. In six months, the Dell cluster will be able to diagram 13,000 proteins, about one-third of the human total, he said -- a task that would take a single PC 1,000 years to perform.

"One has to do this quickly. . . . I don't have 1,000 years," he said.

The Dell cluster, purchased by UB with help from federal and state grants, is well-suited to the task because its independent processors can work separately to determine the structure of different proteins. It was the promise of the high-end cluster that enabled UB to recruit Skolnick, university officials said.

"We've been given the opportunity to do excellent science," Skolnick told the crowd assembled at UB's Norton Hall. "We will attempt to live up to all your expectations."

Cannot distribute vertically e-mail: fwilliams@buffnews.com

HARRY SCULL JR./Buffalo News Dell Computer's Michael
Dell said, "This should have a great benefit to the Buffalo area, but
more broadly to society in general."
Jeffrey Skolnick, head of UB's bioinformatics center, on Dell Cluster.

<
Search again: