Celera's Paracel unit introduces GeneMatcher 2
The GeneMatcher2 contains more than 27,000 programmable parallel processors. The computer is designed to execute some of the most sensitive algorithms, such as Smith-Waterman and Hidden Markov Models, for biological data searches, analysis and gene finding at a great speed.
Over the past two years, industrial-scale, automated sequencing has accelerated the sequencing of the human genome and biological research in general, said Kwang-I Yu, President of Paracel. The issues now are to compare, annotate, and understand the massive amounts of data being generated. To do so effectively, we need to leapfrog current computing technology, and build tools that can keep pace with databases that are doubling in size every few months. GeneMatcher2 makes it feasible to apply some of the most sensitive algorithms to industrial-scale genomic problems, yielding results in a matter of minutes that might otherwise have taken months or even years to execute. We believe that this product will have a significant impact on pharmaceutical and biotechnological research.
The new supercomputer incorporates up-to-the-minute electronic and bioinformatics technology, and is an improved version of its predecessors - GeneMatcher1 and GeneMatcher-Plus. GeneMatcher-Plus is currently operating at 40 pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic sites worldwide. GeneMatcher2 offers increased acceleration, higher throughput, better price/performance ratio, lower start-up costs and more configuration options.
GeneMatcher, introduced in 1997, was the first computer designed for commercial use with custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology to specifically analyze genetic information. The computer analyzes similarities and differences of DNA or protein sequences in relation to other sequences of known genetic location and function. The resulting comparisons provide researchers with critical insights for drug discovery and other genetic research applications.
The GeneMatcher system is a plug-and-play computation server that can be connected to any network. It is delivered with a full suite of software tools allowing it to be used in any bioinformatics environment.