Not long ago, Beijing Genomics Institute and Institute of Computing Technology, both affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have successfully developed a special computer for bioinformatics. Shuguang 4000H, the innovative computer, calculates at a top speed of 504 billion times per second.
In an effort to satisfy computing needs of bioinformatics that are featured with high data volume, dense parallels, monotonous computing mode, and endless repetition, it took two years for Chinese scientists to work out a special computer for bioinformatic application. Made up of 90 common processors, and 10 special hardware accelerators, the dedicated computer has an internal memory of 137GB.
The development of the special computer and the associated algorithms resulted in 3 national invention patent applications, 1 national invention patent grant, 3 software registration certificates, and 32 papers collected by SCI and EI. The computer has been used to assemble the refined charts of rice and domestic silkworm genomes.
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