Tag Archives: cray xe6 supercomputer

Argonne supercomputer dramatically accelerates rapid genome analysis

Although the time and cost of sequencing an entire human genome has plummeted, analyzing the resulting genetic information— three billion base pairs from a single genome—can take many months.

In the journal Bioinformatics, however, a University of Chicago-based team—working with Beagle, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers devoted to life sciences—reports that genome analysis can be radically accelerated. This computer, based at Argonne National Laboratory, is able to analyze 240 full genomes in about two days. (more…)

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A Better Way to ID Extreme Weather Events in Climate Models

*Berkeley Lab scientists help automate the search for hurricanes and other storms in huge datasets*

You’d think that spotting a category 5 hurricane would never be difficult. But when the hurricane is in a global climate model that spans several decades, it becomes a fleeting wisp among mountains of data.

That’s a problem. As scientists develop ever-more sophisticated computer models to predict the effects of climate change, one of the things they’ll look for are changes in the frequency of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and heavy precipitation. The more data generated by models, however, the more difficult it is to quantify these rare but potent events. (more…)

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