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IU and IBM unveil the nation's largest university-owned supercomputer
Oct. 17, 2001
NOTE: A backgrounder with additional information about the new supercomputer is available at http://newsinfo.iu.edu/OCM/releases/ibmspback01.htm. For more technical information about the supercomputer, see http://www.indiana.edu/~uits/cpo/ibmsp/about.html.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University and IBM today (Oct. 17) announced that IU has acquired the nation's largest university-owned supercomputer.
The IBM SP supercomputer, which has been expanded to triple the university's previous supercomputing capacity, will support IU researchers in a broad range of areas, including life sciences, archaeology, astronomy and computational physics. It will also serve as the backbone for a planned genomics research collaboration with IBM.
Capable of performing 1 trillion numerical calculations per second, the teraflop system is the university's largest high-performance computing acquisition ever. The supercomputer is part of the information technology (IT) infrastructure needed to support the Indiana Genomics (INGEN) initiative. This initiative was funded by a major grant from the Lilly Endowment.
Today's announcement broadens a longstanding relationship between IU and IBM and promises a host of benefits to the university and the state of Indiana.
"This agreement builds on a critical mass of intellectual capital already established through IU's outstanding faculty and our expertise in IT-based research," said IU President Myles Brand. "Our faculty and staff will participate in developing state-of-the-art IT tools and applications for life sciences research, including genomics, which will help us discover new ways of preventing and treating human disease."
"Indiana University's teraflop system lays the groundwork for IU to become a leading institution for genomic research," said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM vice president, Technology & Strategy,
IBM Server Group. "Our expanded collaboration will open doors to new discovery and enable both organizations to draw on complementary strengths, including IBM's extensive research expertise in computational biology and advanced IT solutions."
IU is uniquely positioned to advance life sciences research through INGEN, a collaboration of scientists and physicians who will study the information that makes up the human genome and its function in human health. INGEN combines the strength of the IU School of Medicine, research programs in biology and chemistry, and IU's leadership in high performance computing. IBM is the primary provider of supercomputing technology for INGEN.
"The sequencing of the human genome launched a new era of research in the life sciences," said Michael McRobbie, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer. "The unprecedented amounts of genomic data require advanced computational resources. The teraflop supercomputer is a key first component of INGEN's IT infrastructure and will provide a major boost to scientific progress at IU in this area."
The expanded IBM SP supercomputer will provide the computational and data management power required to make advances in many important areas of genomic science. Biomedical and biological sciences present a tremendous wealth of data. Supercomputers are required to analyze these massive data stores and to create the linkages among different types of data (for example, clinical records and genetic information) that will enable new breakthroughs in health care.
"The transformation of life sciences research has brought numerous challenges to the scientific community," said George Strawn, acting assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at the National Science Foundation. "NSF recognizes that the data- and compute-intensive nature of the research requires instruments that U.S. scientists working nationally and internationally can share. IU, in collaboration with IBM, is working to meet these challenges and to make advanced computational resources remotely accessible to the broader research community."
About Indiana University
Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest, and also one of the largest universities in the United States, with more than 110,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses. IU has a growing national and international reputation in the areas of information technology and advanced networking. IU's extensive information technology environment is made up of high performance computing resources, facilities for massive data storage, and advanced visualization laboratories that enable leading scientists to visualize, analyze and store vast amounts of data and information. IU's two main departments of Computer Science include internationally recognized experts in high performance computing and visualization. IU's School of Informatics is among the first of its kind in the nation. The university's record of accomplishment in high performance computing has earned grant recognition from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Pervasive Technology Laboratories at Indiana University, established with a major Lilly Endowment grant, pursues research in the pervasive computing technologies that will help drive the 21st-century information economy.
About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM Life Sciences brings together IBM resources -- from research and e-business expertise to data and storage management and high performance computing -- to deliver new solutions to the life sciences market, including biotechnology, genomic, e-health, pharmaceutical and agri-business companies. For more information on IBM Life Sciences, visit http://www.ibm.com/solutions/lifesciences.
(Craig Stewart, IU, 812-855-4240, stewart@indiana.edu or Theo Chisholm, IBM, 914-766-1180, theoc@us.ibm.com)