IBM Life Sciences Discovery Centre

Headed by Dr. Igor Jurisica, the computational biology facility has been expanding since 1999 using funds from IBM SUR grants), CFI, NIH, GenomeCanada, Ontario Research Fund, and PMHF. The facility spans 4 server rooms housing a housing the main hardware components including:

  • Unix servers (2x p595, 2x p570)
  • Linux cluster (168 node IBM HS21XM BladeCentre cluster with 1,344 CPU cores)
  • Hierarchical storage (DS4700, DCS9550, TS3310 LTO4 tape system)
  • Deep Computing Visualization (6x IBM t221 HD displays, 10-node cluster)

In the June 2008 release of Top500Supercomputers, the Linux cluster was one of only two listed from Canada, and was the fastest research computer in Canada; placed at a position 395 or 58 when energy consumption was considered.

The Centre has been used to: