Supercomputer Gordon battles autism

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When the supercomputer came online in January of 2012, it was an instant superhero. In one demonstration, the computer sustained more than 35 million input/output operations per second.

This type of operation specifies how fast a system can retrieve randomly organized data - common in large data sets - and process it through data-mining applications. The speed and accuracy gave the computer its name “Gordon,” based on superhero Flash Gordon.

Sophisticated and versatile

Gordon’s architecture employs massive amounts of the type of flash memory common in cell phones and laptops. The system is used by scientists who require mining, searching and/or creating large databases. This includes such diverse activities as mapping genomes for applications in personalized medicine and automation of stock market trading by investment firms.

$20 million to create the supercomputer

“Gordon is a unique machine in NSF’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure/XSEDE portfolio,” explained Barry Schneider, NSF program director for advanced cyberinfrastructure. “It was designed to handle scientific problems involving the manipulation of very large data. It is differentiated from most other resources we support in having a large solid-state memory, 4GB per core, and the capability of simulating a very large shared memory system with software.”

Being used for autism and schizophrenia research

Last month Gordon was used to devise a novel way to describe a time-dependent gene-expression process in the brain that can be used to guide the development of treatments for mental disorders such as autism-spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.

“We live in the unique time when huge amounts of data related to genes, DNA, RNA, proteins, and other biological objects have been extracted and stored,” stated lead author Igo Tsigelny, a research scientist with SDSC as well as with UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center. “I can compare this time to a situation when the iron ore would be extracted from the soil and stored as piles on the ground. All we need is to transform the data to knowledge, as ore to steel. Only the supercomputers and people who know what to do with them will make such a transformation possible.”

Source: National Science Foundation

 
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