Grid Computing

Grid Computing

The wide collection of ‘omics’—from genomics to, well, who knows what—generated very high expectations, too high according to Liz From, a global life science business strategist at Sun Microsystems. “After you get past the hype,” From says, “you must pay the piper. With so much data and so many different kinds of data, trying to draw conclusions poses a major challenge. This is where information technology can play a significant role by transforming that data into knowledge that will drive new advancements in the industry.” One solution for handling and analyzing so much disparate data comes from grid computing, which connects many computers within and between institutions with a software system, such as the Sun One Grid Engine.
Research at Sun shows the need for grids. Loralyn Mears, Sun’s market segment manager for the life sciences, says, “We did a study and found that the average biotech company has five months worth of projects, and most companies had to run those serially. Worse yet, the average company used only 22 percent to 25 percent of the available compute cycles.” With Sun’s Grid Engine technology, Mears says, those companies could use 99 percent of the available cycles, without buying one more computer or taking up any additional space. She adds that the Sun One Grid Engine software scales up easily from a dozen computers to a thousand.


“If someone is reasonably information-technology savvy,” Mears says, “he or she can configure a grid in one day with the Sun One Grid Engine. And it can connect machines from Sun, IBM, Silicon Graphics, most anything.” In addition, an open-source version of this software is free. Nevertheless, a company that wants to assign policy restrictions to a grid will need the Enterprise edition, which must be purchased. So far, about eight thousand installations of Sun’s software run grids around the world, and From says, “Life scientists are the biggest consumer group.” For example, Oxford GlycoSciences struggled with BLAST searches that took up to three months to complete, but after installing Sun One Grid Engine software the searches now take about a week.