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1st Oct 2005
Biotech Free Zone and CERT to boost research with first
IBM supercomputer in the Middle East.
Dubai Biotechnology and Research Park (DuBiotech), Dubai?s Free Zone dedicated
to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors, and the Centre of
Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT), the leading technology
and research organisation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have today agreed to
work together to provide DuBiotech?s Business Partners with the capability to conduct
research using IBM?s Blue Gene supercomputer.
Under the terms of DuBiotech?s agreement with CERT, DuBiotech will tap into 5.7
Teraflops of supercomputing power provided by CERT. This mammoth capacity will be
made available to Business Partners at the biotechnology Free Zone to conduct research
related to life sciences and bio-science generally.
The agreement, announced at the IBM stand at Gitex 2005, means that Business Partners
engaged in biotechnology research and development at DuBiotech will have the opportunity
to make use of CERT?s supercomputing centre.
?This immensely powerful supercomputer is normally used for techniques such as life
sciences, astronomy and academic research. This represents a unique opportunity
for DuBiotech and CERT to boost biotechnology research for the
Middle East
,? says Dr Abdulqadr Al Khayat, Executive Director of DuBiotech. ?This further benefits
the leaders in biotechnology who are looking to develop new advances that counter
medical issues prevalent in the Gulf, such as Thalassemia, Diabetes, Anaemia and
Cancer.?
As well as boosting biotechnology, the announcement heralds the arrival in the region
of the first such supercomputer of its kind, as this technology has been previously
deployed only in Europe and the
US
.
?CERT intends to offer supercomputing services on demand to research institutions,
colleges, universities, government and private sector companies with large data
processing requirements. With the explosion of information there is a corresponding
imperative to process at the Teraflop performance level offered by the Blue Gene.
CERT will provide access to the only Blue Gene computer in the entire South Asia,
Middle East,
North Africa
region.? says Dr. Robert Richards, Chief Executive Officer of CERT.
In computers, FLOPS are FLoating-point Operations Per Second. A Floating-point is,
according to IBM, "a method of encoding real numbers within the limits of finite
precision available on computers." Using floating-point encoding, extremely long
numbers can be handled relatively easily. A teraflop is equivalent to a trillion
computing calculations per second.
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