Institute for Chemical Research at Kyoto University Selects SGI to Advance Computational Chemistry and Biological Research

SGI (NASDAQ: SGI), the trusted leader in technical computing, announced today that the Institute for Chemical Research at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan, has selected an SGI high performance computing (HPC) and storage system to advance genomics research at the Institute. Once in place, the HPC system is expected to consist of SGI® UV 1000 systems operating at 32.6 teraflops and delivering up to 6.6x performance increase over the previous system.

The Institute for Chemical Research, founded in 1926 and celebrating its 85th anniversary in 2011, was the first research institute established at Kyoto University. The Institute’s founding vision is to “excel in the investigation of basic principles of chemistry and their applications.”

“Our research laboratory developed the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (“KEGG”), an integrated biosystems database which has been providing services to researchers around the world as part of GenomeNet,” said Minoru Kanehisa, professor and director of the Bioinformatics Center, Institute for Chemical Research at Kyoto University. “Adopting the SGI UV 1000 for GenomeNet calculations will dramatically reduce processing time to provide users with the latest data as quickly as possible, and we look forward to taking full advantage of the large amount of genomic information generated by next-generation sequencers as a center for shared usage and joint research.”

The new solution, selected to replace another HPC system in place at the Institute, was configured with over 3072 cores of Intel® Xeon® processor E7 series. It will contain 48TB of total memory and include 840TB of total storage. The HPC system being supplied by SGI consists of two servers, one for computational chemistry and one for “GenomeNet” calculations.

The computational chemistry server consists of two nodes with 512 cores and 8TB of shared memory. Applications such as quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics will be utilized on the UV 1000, enabling users to run Gaussian, CASTEP, Discover and other programs to examine molecular structures and their specifications and characteristics. The “GenomeNet” calculation server also consists of two nodes with 1024 cores and 16TB of shared memory. “GenomeNet” is a Japanese network of database and computational services for genome research and related research areas in biomedical sciences, operated by the Kyoto University Bioinformatics Center. The GenomeNet service has been developed by the Kanehisa Laboratory in Kyoto University under the leadership of Professor Minoru Kanehisa as part of the university’s research projects.

“Researchers at the world’s leading scientific, academic, government and commercial laboratories are using SGI computers to achieve important advances in science, medicine, and genomics,” said Ryutaro Ishimoto, president of SGI Japan. “Kyoto University and the Institute for Chemical Research are among the most respected institutions of advanced research and higher learning in the world. The results of their genomics research will lead to exciting new learning and discoveries that will impact scientific communities around the world for years to come.”

“The Institute for Chemical Research at Kyoto University requires exceptional computing technology to advance their research agenda,” said Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of HPC at Intel. “The SGI UV 1000 system they have selected, using the Intel® Xeon® processor E7 series, is well suited to deliver the performance and memory required to process these incredibly complex genomics problems. Intel is pleased to be part of this effort, and looks forward to the exciting results that these efforts will bring.”

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