Thursday, October 18, 2001

Indiana University Upgrades Its Supercomputer, Said to Be Academe's Most Powerful By FLORENCE OLSEN Indiana University at Bloomington has tripled the computational and storage capacity of its IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer to add computing power that officials say will be needed for the university's expanding genomics-research program. Genomics scientists use the latest advances in DNA sequencing to understand physiological functions. With the upgrade, announced on Wednesday, the Indiana supercomputer will be capable of performing one trillion calculations per second, making it the nation's largest and most powerful university-owned computer, officials said. "It's providing the kind of power that these scientists predict they're going to need over the next two to three years," said Michael A. McRobbie, Indiana's vice president for information technology and chief information officer. "One of the things we're particularly interested in is matching genomic information with patient-record information," Mr. McRobbie said. In addition to its supercomputing facilities, the university has one of the nation's oldest and largest electronic patient-record systems. That database, Mr. McRobbie said, will help researchers study relationships between genes and human health and disease. He said the database is "appropriately sanitized," meaning that information that would identify individuals has been removed. The university will pay IBM $5-million for the upgrade -- a price discounted by about $10-million, university officials said. A significant portion of the $5-million will come from a $105-million grant from the Lilly Endowment. In addition to operating the supercomputer and large data-storage systems, members of the Indiana technical staff will provide genomics researchers with three-dimensional visualization facilities, high-speed network connections, and help in developing new research applications. Five staff members will work full time with scientists and physicians in the School of Medicine's medical-and-molecular-genetics department, and with researchers in the university's chemistry and biology programs. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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