IBM supercomputer to aid cancer research in Canada

28 June 2008

IBM yesterday announced the deployment of Canada's fastest research supercomputer at the Ontario Cancer Institute, University Health Network  to aid in the search for more effective cancer treatments.

This ground-breaking research analyses millions of images of proteins. Through automation, high resolution imaging and sophisticated computer-based image classification, researchers are attempting to more quickly identify the structure of disease-related proteins, and thus improve researchers' ability to design new treatments for cancer.

The new IBM System Cluster 1350 supercomputer incorporates IBM's recently announced DCS9550 Disk Storage System, as well as Deep Computing Visualization to create high-resolution images required for the research analysis.

The system includes 1,344 processor cores in the Linux cluster running at 12.5 teraflops (trillion calculations per second) with 150 TB of storage, making it one of the fastest research clusters in Canada.

The research is led by Dr. Igor Jurisica, at the Ontario Cancer Institute, working in collaboration with scientists at Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network and Buffalo's Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute.

"We need to better understand the specific function and interactions of proteins that cause cancer," said Dr. Jurisica. "This research will enable us to diagnose cancer earlier, before symptoms appear, to have the best chance of treating disease."