HomeProduct Complimentary download Contribution to wheat genome in spotlight at supercomputing conference

Contribution to wheat genome in spotlight at supercomputing conference

Keyword:
Publish time: 1st December, 2014      Source: Norwich, United Kingdom
Information collection and data processing:  CCM     For more information, please contact us
Contribution to wheat genome in spotlight at supercomputing conferenceContribution to wheat genome in spotlight at supercomputing conference" title="Share this link on Facebook">Norwich, United KingdomNovember 28, 2014GAC attended the annual SC14 conference in New Orleans, US, 16-21 November, the largest and most significant meeting for supercomputing and HPC professionals worldwide. The supercomputing conference spotlights the most innovative and fascinating scientific and technical applications from around the world, bringing together the HPC (high-performance computing) community – with over 10, 000 attendees. Director Mario Caccamo, Head of Scientific Computing Tim Stitt (pictured) and Paul Fretter from Norwich Bioscience Institutes (NBI) attended from TGAC. Tim Stitt presented a talk entitled, “Beyond Human – Sequencing the Complex Wheat Genome to Advance Global Food Security" at the annual SGI User Forum; one of only four invited talks from SGI's global customer base.Tim also represented the UK and Europe at the annual gathering of XSEDE campus champions. XSEDE is a 5-year, $121 million US National Science Foundation project, for developing the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated advanced digital resources and services in the world.“With an attendance of over 10,000 people the networking opportunities at the conference provided tremendous visibility for TGAC and its research,” said Tim Stitt, TGAC’s lead at the conference. “In addition to attending technical program presentations, myself, Mario and Paul attended many vendor briefings throughout the week with the leaders in HPC and supercomputing technology including SGI, Intel, Cray Inc. and IBM.”At these closed-door sessions, attendees heard from each company about their upcoming technology roadmaps over the next 5-10 years. Such information is crucial to helping shape TGAC's own HPC roadmap so attendance at these meetings is vital to sustaining TGAC's computational leadership at the forefront of Bioscience.TGAC’s research, in association with Intel, has also been promoted by a video recently shot onsite that focuses on at the Institute'sHPC capabilities to sequence and assemble one of the most complex genomes, the bread wheat genome.Robert Maskell, High Performance Computing at Intel, said: “Intel is delighted to welcome TGAC to SC14 where will continue our close collaboration to help accelerate the pace of discovery of TGACs research agenda.”Simon Appleby, Life Sciences Manager (EMEA) at SGI, added: “SGI has been privileged to collaborate with TGAC to accelerate their highly recognized and valued research output since 2010. The high performance X86-64 shared memory ‘UV’ architectures procured by TGAC have allowed for rapid deployment when exploring cutting edge software, new algorithms and programming models without restrictions artificially placed by the fixed resources on a cluster node, such as memory. This freedom in computational capacity now allows TGAC biologists to assemble and analyse large and complex genome sequences entirely in memory, with extreme ease of use, which was not previously possible. We look forward to continued collaboration with TGAC to promote their research and capabilities on the international stage.”Running alongside the SC14technical program of around 5,000 participants,the SC14 Exhibition Hallhosts over 350exhibitors featuring the latest and greatest technologies from industry, academia and government research organisations; many of these technologies will be seen for the first time in New Orleans.The keynote speaker at SC14 was physicist and best-selling author Brian Greene.Understanding Life on EarthTGAC is using Intel-powered super computers to collect and crunch complex data that is shaping the future of science. Tackling problems like population growth and securing food supply, is what the Institute aims to solve. Having a super computer that keeps up with the type of data delivered is crucial. The research output requires a significantly large amount of computing power, because there are hundreds and millions of sequences must be analysed. When looking at the human genome alone, there are three billion letters of DNA. The super computers are used to categorise, process, and analyse genome sequences of various plants, animals, and microbes. The scientists at TGAC have already sequenced and assembled 17 of the 21 chromosomes of the highly complex wheat genome, using the Intel technology-powered SGI UV system for sequencing.Watch TGAC-Intel’s video ‘TGAC Understanding Life on Earth’, full case-study can be seen here.More news from: TGAC - The Genome Analysis CentreWebsite: http://www.tgac.ac.uk/Published: December 1, 2014The news item on this page is copyright by the organization where it originatedFair use notice