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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / MAY 19, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 20
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Scientific
Applications:
GATEWAY GRID DRIVES DIABETES
RESEARCH
Significantly increasing the speed and accuracy at which the more than 17
million Americans with diabetes can find the best treatments, the American
Diabetes Association (ADA) announced recently that it has selected the
grid-computing service from Gateway Inc and United Devices, leaders in secure
grid solutions.
The ADA will use Gateway Processing On Demand (GPOD), backed by United
Device's Grid MP Alliance platform, to accelerate critical diabetes-related
research. The platform will run software to help the ADA analyze clinical
programs and treatments, develop clinical practice guidelines, study the
efficiency of care processes, set priorities and plan diabetes research.
By using GPOD, the ADA has already experienced a dramatic improvement in
the
time it takes to process a component of diabetes related research -- from 48
hours down to one hour -- and is expecting further reductions in time for
improved efficiency. Previously, such calculations stretched the limits of
normal computing resources and caused unacceptable delays.
"Renting supercomputer time to perform these types of calculations can cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars," said Dr. Richard Kahn, chief scientific and
medical officer for the American Diabetes Association, a non-profit
organization based in Alexandria, Va. "By leveraging thousands of computers on
the Gateway grid, we're able to perform our studies in the quickest and most
accurate way."
Conceived as a technique to process information normally handled by
supercomputers, grid computing links thousands of PCs to collectively share
processing power. Gateway's POD service launched December 2002, joining nearly
7,000 computers in Gateway retail stores across the United States. Unlike
several companies that have promised grid computing, Gateway's POD service is
available today, ranking it among the top 10 largest supercomputers in the
world by processing power. In fact, Gateway's grid can produce more than 11
TFLOPS (trillion floating point operations per second) at peak capacity, with
most nodes averaging 2.0 GHz or better.
"The beauty of this solution is that customers can take advantage of the
high-performance grid computing power of nearly 7,000 PCs without investing
upfront capital building their own technology infrastructure," said Bob
Burnett, executive vice president and chief technical officer, Gateway Inc.
"Companies pay only for the processing power they need to solve their complex
computational problems."
While Gateway provides the hardware for the GPOD service, United Device's
Grid
MP Alliance platform provides the virtual operating system for the grid.
Customers submit job requests, get real-time status updates and pick up
results when the job is complete -- all covered by United Device's unmatched
Grid MP security architecture. To process its data on the grid, the ADA runs
what is called "the Archimedes software application," originally developed by
Kaiser Permanente. The ADA grid may also serve as the test bed for further
development of the Archimedes application.
"This is a great example of an application ideally suited for the GPOD,"
said
Ed Hubbard, CEO of United Devices. "Now small and medium-sized companies have
such a large amount of compute power available on demand, there is no reason
not to reap the benefits of reduced processing time and increased competitive
edge."
The Gateway Processing On Demand service is competitively priced based on
processor hours used and does not require any long-term or minimum-usage
commitments. For more information, go to
gateway.com/work/services/pod.shtml or
www.ud.com/alliance.
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