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3UP Systems' CMS-4U Blade Server Used By Los Alamos National Lab to Demonstrate mpiBLAST at SC2004

Posted on: Thursday, 11 November 2004, 12:00 CST

PITTSBURGH, Pa., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- 3UP Systems, a provider of network integrated blade server systems to the end user and OEM customers, today announced that the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is demonstrating its mpiBLAST software on the company's CMS-4U blade server at this year's SC2004 conference at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA, from November 8th - 11th, 2004.

BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is a family of database searching algorithms used in Bioinformatics for applications such as DNA matching. mpiBLAST (Message Passing Interface BLAST) is an open-source parallelization of NCBI BLAST (National Center for Biotechnology Information Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) and uses the Message Passing Interface to implement database segmentation, allowing it to work particularly well on cluster system architectures. This approach achieves super-linear speed-up by segmenting the BLAST database and distributing it across cluster nodes, permitting BLAST queries to be processed on many nodes simultaneously. Because database segmentation does not create heavy communication demands and mpi-based BLAST allows for parallelization of BLAST, users can take advantage of low-cost and efficient Linux cluster architectures such as that afforded by 3UP Systems' CMS-4U blade server.

"The SC conference provides an ideal synergy between the latest in high-performance computing research, as represented by its technical program, and the latest in vendor technologies in support of HPC, as represented by its large-scale exhibition," said Wu-chun Feng of Los Alamos National Laboratory and a member of the HPCwire's 2004 Top People and Organizations To Watch List. "For SC2004, we are using 3UP Systems' CMS-4U blade server for our mpiBLAST demonstration because it offers the performance that we need for mpiBLAST in an energy-efficient compact package."

"In our own benchmark tests running 10 parallel mpiBLAST nodes in 3UP's chassis, the database distribution phase was completed in 4 minutes, versus 3 1/2 hours on one processor -- a significant achievement especially considering its price/performance," added Harry Quackenboss, president and CEO of 3UP Systems. "3UP's CMS-4U gives the HPC user community the ability to scale their performance needs while lowering their total-cost-of-ownership."

About 3UP's CMS-4U Blade Server

* 3UP's CMS-4U is a 4U (6 3/4 inches high) chassis that accommodates up

to 12 dual-processor Xeon server blades. The system's unmatched

flexibility lets users customize each chassis with the blend of

compute power, storage capacity and networking capability that best

suits their application.

About 3UP Systems

3UP Systems, founded in 2001, is a provider of network-integrated blade server systems which it markets to end user and OEM customers. 3UP Systems is headquartered in Cupertino, California and has an R&D facility in Shanghai, China and sales headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.

For more information, contact 3UP Systems at: 6 Results Way, Cupertino, CA 95014; Phone: 408-517-0782; Fax: 408-777-8091; website: http://www.3upsystems.com/.

3UP Systems

CONTACT: Media Relations, Curtis Chan of CHAN & ASSOCIATES, INC.,+1-714-447-4993, ext. 100, or fax, +1-714-447-6020, cj_chan@chanandassoc.com,for 3UP Systems

Web site: http://www.3upsystems.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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