Blackstone Builds Compute Farm for Celera Genomics for Rapid Mapping of Human Genome.

Business/Technology Editors

WORCESTER, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 1, 2000

Blackstone Applies Its ComputeFarm Advantage to Help

Celera Form One of the Largest Supercomputers in the World

Blackstone Technology Group today announced that Celera Genomics (NYSE:CRA), a PE Corporation business, has selected Blackstone to assist the company with configuration and roll-out of one of the world's largest compute farms. Celera has recently announced that the company has DNA sequence in the Celera database that covers 90 percent of the human genome. Using the compute farm, Celera will be able to speed the analysis of the 3.5 billion units of information that comprise the human genome. Celera's need for speed is essential as the company races to uncover genetic information that may someday lead to novel therapies and cures for illnesses.

&uot;Celera is proving that the time for compute farms is now,&uot; said Blackstone president Ron Ranauro. &uot;For Celera, every available second of processing power is critical to its success. Prior to the computer farm, computers at Celera were organized by function. While one group of computers at Celera's headquarters was processing data, another group would remain idle waiting for data. This downtime meant that Celera's computers were not being tapped to their full potential. Now, with their compute farm in place, Celera is able to use all of its processors, all the time as they move forward quickly in their quest to map the human genome. It is immensely gratifying to provide our compute farm services for such an important scientific cause.&uot;

Celera's compute farm pools together hundreds of Comqaq AlphaStation 64-bit workstations, enabling them to act as one large supercomputer. According to a recent NPR report, it is second in capacity only to the United States Defense Department's supercomputer. The compute farm consists of five system area networks connected into one large HPTL-160 storage area network using a fibre channel switch. The compute farm currently links 298 processors: 50 2GB servers with four CPUs each, 20 4GB servers with four CPUs each, and three 20GB servers with six CPUs each.

Demonstrating the significance of compute farm capabilities, Celera's compute farm recently processed 65,000 individual jobs in 15 hours, an assignment that once took six days.

At Celera, Blackstone implemented its ComputeFarm Advantage solution, which combines strategic consulting and the company's technical knowledge of the Load Sharing Facility (LSF) software from Platform Computing, together with its own SmartWatch compute farm capacity monitoring system.

For more information on Blackstone and ComputeFarm Advantage, please contact the company at www.btgp.com or 508-793-2162. For more on compute farms, please visit the compute farm portal at www.computefarm.com.

More on ComputeFarm Advantage

Blackstone's ComputeFarm Advantage guides engineering organizations through the process of transforming their networked computers into a compute farm. Its components work together to quickly qualify compute farm candidates; gauge current computing environments; configure the farm; speed full implementation; monitor the farm; and allow for additional compute power to be added on short demand.

More on Compute Farms

A compute farm is a pool of networked computers that are turbo-charged into a single source of massive compute power. Compute farms are created by applying enabling technology and enabling knowledge to achieve Big Iron benefits at a fraction of the cost. They provide scalable and uninterrupted compute power for executing jobs that are long-running as well as CPU and memory intensive. Unlike server farms used in e-commerce and web-hosting applications, which process a huge number of relatively short transactions, compute farms efficiently execute a smaller number of large jobs that run for extended time periods.

About Blackstone

Blackstone Technology Group, Inc. designs and builds compute farms that deliver Big Iron benefits at a fraction of the cost. Compute farms provide scaleable and uninterrupted compute power for executing mission-critical jobs that are long-running as well as CPU and memory intensive. That is why compute farms are a clear choice for electronics, biotechnology, and software engineering applications. Blackstone's ComputeFarm Advantage helps companies turbo-charge a bunch of computers that are merely networked together into a compute farm.

ComputeFarm Advantage is a trademark of Blackstone Technology Group, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.