The Beijing Genome Institute and the Computing Technology Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have developed, through combined efforts, a super server for bioinformatics.

Xu Zhiwei, deputy director of the Institute of Computing Technology who leads the research project, said the super server, coded as 4000H, is specially designed for bioinformatic research.

"With comparatively low cost," Xu said, "we have achieved high performance of the super server."

The system has 90 central processing units and 10 special accelerators, which ensure the performance capability of more than four trillion times per second.

The researchers have also developed a series of software which is suitable for bioinformatics.

The super server has already been employed in the precise mapping of rice genome and the draft mapping of silkworm genome.

The research team has applied for three invention patents, with one being granted, and gained four software invention registrations.

Source: Xinhua