C-DAC develops Biochrome

>DNA
February 15, 2012

It will help in faster sequencing of biological data of human beings

Giving new dimensions to the sequencing of hundreds of genomes or biological data of human beings, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has developed a supercomputing cluster called as Biochrome. It is an advanced blade server-based high performance computing (HPC) facility that has a computing capacity of 5 teraflop, said director general of C-DAC Rajat Moona.

He was speaking to media persons on the eve of launch of the machine on Tuesday at Accelerating Biology 2012, the three-day symposium at a hotel in city. He said, “The computing facility is one of the technology enablers that can accelerate the process of analysing, data mining and simulation of biological data. The advent of next generation sequencing technology has brought in a new dimension to understanding the molecular basis for the occurrence of diseases.’’

The pace of sequencing is leading to data overload and the ability to analyse is much beyond the existing computing capabilities. In order to gear up to tackle these challenges, most biologists are adopting the use of cyber infrastructure. Bioinformatics Resources and Applications Facility (BRAF) at C-DAC is an effort towards providing high-end supercomputing facility to researchers working in the area of life sciences.

The project is funded by the department of information technology, ministry of communications and information technology. C-DAC is collaborating with organisations like National Cancer Institute (NCI) of USA, Tata Memorial Centre (Mumbai), Roslin Institute (UK), University of Edinburgh (UK), University of Surrey (UK), Oregon Health and Science University (USA), Sanger Institute (UK), National Centre for Cell Science (Pune) and University of Pune (Pune),