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Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems Unveil Enhanced SPARC Enterprise Servers

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:23:45 +0200

Tokyo and Santa Clara, CA (OBBeC) - Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems have announced an enhanced line of SPARC Enterprise servers – M4000, M5000, M8000 and M9000, which according to the companies, delivers a highly scalable, enterprise-class virtualization and consolidation platform with up to 80 percent better performance on commercial applications and 2x better performance on HPC workloads and using 44 percent less energy per core.

The new SPARC Enterprise servers are based on the quad-core SPARC64 Ⅶ processor and the Solaris Operating System (OS). Both companies affirmed that the new servers are ideal platforms for high-availability, mission-critical enterprise applications including large-scale databases, BIDW, ERP and CRM. The new processor is also available as an option for seamless upgrades in existing SPARC Enterprise servers.

"The SPARC Enterprise servers advanced to a new stage with the SPARC64 Ⅶ processor, which provides spectacular performance, reliability and eco-efficiency and benefits from Fujitsu's unparalleled mainframe heritage," said Tatsuo Tomita, corporate senior executive vice president and a board member at Fujitsu. "We are confident that the SPARC64 Ⅶ processor which powers the world's most scalable and flexible systems, not only protects but also increases the value of our customer's investments."

Further to the announcement, the new SPARC Enterprise servers build on the existing systems co-designed by Fujitsu and Sun and extend long-term customer investment protection through binary compatibility, industry leading hardware and software partitioning and the ultra-flexible "mix and match" SPARC64 processor architecture. These SPARC Enterprise servers are the only systems on the market with the ability to mix SPARC64 Ⅵ and Ⅶ processors in a single domain, enabling customers to increase performance – without downtime and without requiring other hardware changes, outlines the report. Moreover, customers can minimize upgrade costs by using the new SPARC64 Ⅶ option in current SPARC Enterprise servers.

With the addition of the new quad-core SPARC64 Ⅶ processor, the SPARC Enterprise servers also offer unmatched scalability in a single symmetric multi-processor system (SMP) system – from 16 to 256 cores. The SPARC64 Ⅶ processor also delivers the RAS functions of SPARC64 Ⅵ, including hardware instruction retry, dynamic degradation and parity-protected processor registers, to maintain the levels of performance and reliability needed in mission-critical systems.

The new processor consumes 44 percent less energy per core than the SPARC64 Ⅵ chip, enabling customers to consolidate and minimize energy consumption. Leveraging built-in hardware partitioning features and Solaris Containers, the new SPARC Enterprise servers form an “ultra-high” density environment that provides powerful virtualization capabilities.

The new SPARC Enterprise systems are available immediately directly from Fujitsu and Sun and their authorized resellers. The SPARC64 Ⅶ processors will also be available as upgrades for existing systems.

Caliper Life Sciences Introduces LabChip GX and LabChip GXII

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:57:25 +0200

  Hopkinton, MA (OBBeC) -Caliper Life Sciences has introduced two microfluidics-based separations products, the LabChip GX and LabChip GXII benchtop systems, for fast, automated, 1-D electrophoretic separations of protein, DNA, and RNA samples.

The LabChip GX represents a low price entry system targeted at genomics applications, while the GXII combines both genomics and protein research applications. The LabChip GX series of instruments will be marketed by Caliper and is designed to provide scientists novel benefits including extended walk away time, higher throughput and economical plate processing ability. Caliper also provides solutions to scientists with lower throughput needs through its collaborations with Agilent and Bio-Rad.

According to the announcement, both systems combine Caliper’s highly reproducible assay technology with advanced data analysis and visualization software. With 96-well and 384-well plate compatibility and the ability to select single wells at any location in a plate, the LabChip GX and GXII systems provide great flexibility, and performance. Leveraging Caliper’s patented microfluidics technology, users are able to thoroughly analyze samples in seconds instead of minutes, eliminating throughput bottlenecks and improving efficiency. The advanced data management software suite included with each system allows users to visualize results via an electropherogram or virtual gel view. Additionally it provides data in tabular form, which can then be analyzed or easily exported into a spreadsheet format.

“With applications ranging from protein therapeutics research to gene expression analysis to genotyping of transgenic mice, the LabChip GX and GXII represent an integral component of Caliper Life Sciences’ overall strategy of developing products that bridge the in vitro – in vivo translational gap,” said Rick Bunch, Microfluidics Product Manager, Caliper Life Sciences. “The LabChip GX and GXII provide high quality, accurate, and reproducible data that enable researchers to accelerate their discovery efforts, while saving time and money.”

The new LabChip GX instrument has been designed expressly for the needs of genomics researchers for the analysis of RNA integrity for better RT-PCR and microarray gene expression data, DNA fragment analysis for sequencing applications and genotyping transgenic mice, and numerous other applications that require accurate size, concentration, or purity analysis of nucleic acid samples. A unique feature of the LabChip GX is the ability to analyze any single sample, or a subset of samples in a microtitre plate using an intuitive GUI interface. This feature enables researchers to assess RNA integrity by randomly sampling a plate or conduct “hit picking” experiments on samples of particular interest.

The LabChip GXII system, which is a complete functional replacement of the LabChip 90, provides consistent and precise analysis of both protein and nucleic acid samples. The LabChip 90 has been widely adopted by researchers developing antibody-based therapeutics and is ideally suited for quantifying size, titre, purity, and fragmentation. This automated separations platform also enables scientists to explore the effect of multiple variables in parallel – a process which is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming using manual methods. As a direct consequence, robust methods for protein expression can be established that accelerate high throughput screening, crystallography, and analytical analyses that require large amounts of protein.

Intel Launches New Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:44:44 +0200

Intel has unveiled the launch of its Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology products for laptops powered by five new Intel Core2 Duo processors.

Genomatix Releases Genome Analyzer

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:02:12 +0200

Germany (OBBeC) - Genomatix Software has announced the availability of the Genomatix Genome Analyzer. According to the company, the Genome Analyzer (GGA) is the first integrated hardware / software solution for in-depth analysis of data generated by next generation sequencing (NGS) devices as provided by Illumina, Roche (454), Applied Biosystems (SOLiD) and Helicos.

As per the announcement, terabytes of locally installed data integrated with Genomatix analysis technology facilitate easy extraction of relevant biological knowledge from mammalian ChIP-seq and transcriptome studies.

A typical analysis of a ChIP-seq experiment with 10 million reads takes only 2 hours. Results contain all important information: clustered and classified enriched regions, transcription factor (TF) over-representation and TF associations. In addition, genome-wide correlations with genomic features as well as meta-analysis with genome-wide chromatin modification, methylation state, expression levels or any data derived by other NGS experiments can be added with a few mouse clicks. Identification of phylogenetically conserved functional elements add another dimension of analytic power.

Transcriptome studies result in normalized and quantified expression values and allow for immediate identification of new transcriptional units and splice variants, all integrated and visualized the genome annotation ElDorado, which is built into the GGA.

The GGA is driven by an easy-to-use, integrated browser based interface. Alternatively all database structures, scripts and tools are open and accessible to the bioinformatics specialist for re-arrangement or integration of own procedures.

>> www.genomatix.de/genome_analyzer.html

Verticals onDemand Introduces New VMobile iPhone Edition

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:00:00 +0200

Pleasanton, CA (OBBeC) - Verticals onDemand, provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM applications to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, recently announced the release of its VMobile iPhone Edition. This announcement comes just weeks after Verticals onDemand’s launch of the VMobile Tablet Edition.  

According to the company, the new VMobile iPhone Edition provides pharmaceutical and biotechnology sales representatives with real-time access to their VBioPharma SaaS CRM system. All VMobile iPhone Edition users access the same version of the underlying multitenant software code on the back-end, enabling easy upgrades and consistently high quality.

Moreover, with all VMobile applications, life sciences companies can deploy mobile applications that do not require additional maintenance cost or effort to support and enhance.   In contrast to Verticals onDemand’s VMobile Tablet and PDA Editions which run in a disconnected mode, the new VMobile iPhone Edition operates in a connected mode at all times. Pharmaceutical representatives can log sales calls and record physician reactions in real-time from anywhere there is cell phone coverage.

The iPhone also provides integration with Google Maps for instant driving directions.   “Users can execute calls with one finger, making this the easiest-to-use application on the easiest-to-use platform ever launched in this market,” said Peter Gassner, president and chief executive officer of Verticals onDemand.

>> www.verticalsondemand.com/products/vmobile-iphone.php

Accelrys Releases Materials Studio 4.3

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:38:27 +0200

San Diego, CA (OBBeC) – Accelrys has announced the release of Materials Studio 4.3, the newest version of its materials modelling and simulation platform.

This new release, according to the company, delivers a range of tools that extends modelling and simulation capabilities to systems larger than ever before. Tools in the areas of quantum mechanics, mesoscale modelling, and polymorph prediction enable users to increase the complexity of systems that can be modelled in the fields of nanomaterials, molecular crystals, polymers and organic chemistry.

Materials Studio ONETEP can model large systems with thousands of atoms fully quantum mechanically, providing unprecedented accuracy for systems of this size. Materials Studio ONETEP is able to scale calculations across hundreds of CPUs, making efficient use of computational resources.

QMERA, a hybrid technology, enables researchers to combine quantum and molecular mechanics in a single calculation for the prediction of structural, thermodynamic, and electronic properties up to an order of magnitude faster than traditional quantum calculations without compromising accuracy.

Mesotek is a next-generation field-based mesoscale application enabling users to increase the complexity of systems that can be modelled in the fields of nanomaterials, molecular crystals, polymers and organic chemistry. Materials Studio Mesotek provides a coarse-grained approach that allows the combination of soft and hard materials in a single calculation.

As a result of continued collaboration with the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), Materials Studio 4 .3 includes a new tool, Motif, which allows users to categorize hydrogen bonding topology and to score polymorphs by comparing to known packing arrangements–information that can be used to select optimum solvents and co-crystals for achieving a particular crystal form.

Materials Studio 4.3 also delivers a force field editor, methods for improved prediction of band structure, and new tools for studying surfaces.

"By providing a complete multiscale modelling environment, Materials Studio 4.3 extends our customers' modelling and simulation capabilities to systems larger and more complex than ever before, delivering results that can be used at the molecular or the engineering scale" said Accelrys' President and Chief Executive Officer Mark J. Emkjer. "When combined with our advanced analytics and data integration platform, we are creating flexible, customizable and fully integrated scientific business intelligence solutions that help our customers solve key problems throughout the research and development process."

>> www.accelrys.com/products/materials-studio

New Data Analysis Solution Released by CLC bio

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:35:44 +0200

Aarhus, Denmark (OBBeC) - CLC bio today announced the release of their new Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) solution, CLC Genomics Workbench, which boasts highly advanced technology and algorithms, while also supporting and integrating with the rest of a typical NGS workflow.

According to the company, the new analysis package can analyze and visualize data from all the major NGS platforms, such as SOLiD by Applied Biosystems, 454 GS flx by Roche Applied Science, Solexa by Illumina, and HeliScope by Helicos.

Director of Scientific Solutions at CLC bio, Dr. Roald Forsberg, states, “We set out to overcome two major challenges when analyzing Next Generation Sequencing data. One was to eliminate the analysis bottleneck by being able to analyze NGS data faster than it is produced. We overcame that by implementing an accelerated assembly algorithm in CLC Genomics Workbench which preliminary benchmark tests confirm is a very fast assembly algorithm. Secondly, we wanted to deliver user-friendly software which makes powerful NGS analysis software available to all biomedical researchers.”

In benchmark tests, CLC bio has assembled half a million 454 reads against the full E.coli reference genome in around 2 minutes on a dual-core computer with 1 gigabyte RAM. This speed-up, based on integrated SIMD high-performance computing technology, increases even more when using a computer with more CPU-cores and RAM, outlines the company. CLC bio expects to release a benchmark white paper in the near future.

CLC Genomics Workbench 1.0 takes full advantage of “paired end” data, and supports a number of features and work-tasks, such as reference assembly of genomes, de novo assembly of genomes, SNP detection using advanced models, multiplexing, and high-throughput trimming.

Having completed the first version of CLC Genomics Workbench, CLC bio is already pursuing a development roadmap, which will enhance future softwares with features such as Digital Gene Expression, metagenomics, clustering and assembly of EST and cDNA sequences, large amounts of genomics and transcriptomics downstream analyses, and workflow support.

CLC Genomics Workbench has already been chosen as Next Generation Sequencing platform for all Danish universities.

>> www.clcbio.com/genomics

Rosetta Biosoftware Releases Rosetta Syllego System Version 2.0

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:49:34 +0200

Seattle, WA (OBBeC) - Rosetta Biosoftware, a provider of science informatics solutions, has announced that the Rosetta Syllego system version 2.0, its system for genetic studies, is now available. The newest version has been designed to create even more opportunities for researchers to see their work impact patient care.

According to the company, the Syllego system addresses common obstacles faced by genetic researchers that prevent them from from effectively translating research findings into clinical practice. These obstacles include: working with non-standardized study data from multiple platforms, accessing and implementing the most appropriate analysis method, and sharing and publishing data so that collaboration between the appropriate, distinct groups and organizations can take place.

The Syllego system provides a solution that brings together the technologies and people to solve problems and spur on the interaction between research and clinical practice. "We've worked closely with our customers to understand these challenges, and our goal was to develop a system that bridges the gaps and stimulates the connection between research and clinical practice by allowing scientists to choose the best technologies to answer questions and by developing a system that brings all data, key users, and functional areas together," said Yelena Shevelenko, General Manager of Rosetta Biosoftware. Version 2.0 has been enhanced with an expanded set of data analysis tools and the option to use server-side processing.

Furthermore, the new system ships with an expanded set of Syllego analysis workflows for association tests available from PLINK_1,2. The following tests are included in these workflows:

Population based association tests: Basic case/control, Fisher’s Exact test, stratified
analysis, quantitative trait interaction, linear/logistic regression, and set based test;
Family based association tests: TDT, DFAM, QFAM;
Haplotype association tests: Case/control association and family based association;
Allows users to build own custom Syllego analysis workflows to take advantage of third-party applications such as R;
Download additional workflows for third-party applications such as Allegro and MERLIN
from the Syllego system Support Web site3 as they become available.
Exchange Syllego analysis workflows among collaborators.

The new system also introduces a new enhanced user interface that lets users reorganize your workspace display with ease. Version 2.0 will be showcased at the Ninth Annual Beyond Genome conference in San Francisco, California, June 8-11, and via a series of three Rosetta Biosoftware-hosted Webinars, starting on June 12th.

Sneak Preview of Apple's New Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:59:27 +0200

SAN FRANCISCO (OBBeC) - Apple has previewed Mac OS X Snow Leopard at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which is being held this week. The new system is built on Apple's current OS X Leopard and is said to be the next major version of the company's operating system. Rather than focussing primarily on new features, Apple said that Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime X.

“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more”, said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system”.

Snow Leopard delivers support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central”, making it easy for developers to create programmes that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthermore, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.

Using media technology which Apple has pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari with a much faster implementation of JavaScript, increasing performance by 53 percent, enhancing the user experience for Web 2.0 applications.

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal and Address Book, making it easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size. According to Apple's press release, Mac OS X Snow Leopard is scheduled to ship in about a year.

>> www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard

Sun Unveils New Systems Powered By Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processors

Mon, 26 May 2008 22:00:00 +0200

Santa Clara, CA (OBBeC) - Sun Microsystems has announced the availability of its first Sun Fire and Sun Blade systems powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, bringing new capabilities, increased performance and expanded scalability to customers that purchase or upgrade to these quad-core systems.

According to the announcement, the Sun Fire X4140, Sun Fire X4240 and Sun Fire X4440 servers, the newest systems to join Sun's extensive x64 (x86, 64-bit) server line, provide energy efficiency, density and scalability powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors and a choice of operating systems, including the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), OpenSolaris operating system, Linux, Windows and VMware.

Additional systems announced with Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors include the Sun Fire X2200 M2, Sun Fire X4100 M2, Sun Fire X4200 M2, Sun Fire X4600 M2 and Sun Blade X8440 servers. Building on Sun's line of AMD Opteron-based Sun Fire servers, Sun servers powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors offer:

Storage: The Sun Fire X4140 and Sun Fire X4240, with eight and 16 disk drives, respectively, can function as mini-storage systems ideally suited for scale-out applications such as database, HPC and Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing (BIDW). Boasting high I/O throughput, they make ideal Open Storage servers for deploying highly scalable storage infrastructures, when combined with ZFS and OpenSolaris. Additionally, all the new systems announced are already optimized to deliver the next significant boost in applications performance through flash-based disk technologies.

Density: The Sun Fire X4440 and Sun Fire X4600 M2 servers both offer comparable memory as other systems, yet in half the space. The Sun Fire X4440 server provides 4-socket x64 AMD Opteron server in a 2U form factor.

Memory: The Sun Fire X4600 M2 and Sun Blade X8440 servers are optimized for virtualization, boasting very high memory capacity.

Availability and Pricing

The Sun Fire X2200 M2, Sun Fire X4100 M2, Sun Fire X4140, Sun Fire X4200 M2, Sun Fire X4240 and Sun Fire X4440 servers powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors are available now. The Sun Fire X4600 M2 and Sun Blade X8440 servers powered by Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors are expected to be available by the end of the quarter.