Pop Quiz! What new technology has the United States and Japan engaged in the virtual equivalent of the space race?

Biotechnology!

How Biotech is Driving Computing  $9 Million supercomputer called the MDGrape-3 has come into the market.  Capable to perform one quadrillion calculations every second!!

MDGrape-3  Special purpose computer system  Molecular Dynamic Simulations  Proteins  Other biochemical complexes  Purpose to road-test new drugs  Calculates effectively to accelerate simulations.

Business Applications  Why is it important to the Biotech industry?  Pharmaceutical companies have tens of thousands of chemical compounds to try out  They need to know how each one will bind to trillions of different proteins in our bodies  Can know in seconds whether compound and protein will work together.

Limitations  Not the world’s fastest supercomputer  Can’t run many software used now by biotech industries  IBM’s Blue Gene/ L being sent out to researchers in Japan

Biggest Competition Blue Gene/ L  Created and distributed by IBM  trillion calculations per second  Sells for $2 million and also available for rent.

MDGrape-3’s Importance  Gene-sequencing and protein-mapping give us the ability to protect ourselves from diseases  Find what causes ailments and find the cure!

Questions?