Press Releases

March 7, 2002 -- Sun Microsystems of Canada Inc. recently celebrated the official opening ofthe Sun Center of Excellence (COE) for Visual Genomics at the University ofCalgary (U of C). This new Sun COE joins a worldwide network of academicinstitutions developing advanced technology in computational biology. Tolearn more, Supercomputing Online interviewed Sun Microsystems' StephanUnger, Global Education & Research, Jonny Akerberg, Sr. Product manager,Visualization Products, and Subra Mohan, Product Line Manager, VisualizationProducts.

SCO: Please provide some background on Sun's academic Center of Excellenceprogram.

UNGER: Sun Global Education and Research establishes close collaborationswith carefully selected schools and non-profit organizations throughout theglobe in various areas, including science and engineering, HPC, eLearning,libraries, administration, etc. The schools share our vision of buildingcommunities of users, and are willing to make a joint investment. Withincomputational biology, we have established COEs with the University ofWisconsin, Virginia Bioinformatics Insititute, Delaware BiotechnologyInstitute, Beijing Genomics Institute, University of Chicago, as well as theUniversity of Calgary. More are planned, and we have been able to fosterseveral collaborative projects among our COEs.

SCO: Tell us about the high-end systems from Sun that were delivered to theUniversity of Calgary.

UNGER: University of Calgary is building a Sun Campus Grid for a 3-Drepresentation biological system with a Java-3D enabled CAVE solution, withSun Fire 6800, 4 Sun Expert3D Graphics Accelerator, 5 TB of SunStorage T3s,SunRays, and Sun Grid Engine.

Sun's High Performance and Technical Computing (HPTC) strategy is to provideend-to-end solutions that incorporate technical computing requirements forefficient, highly scalable computation, efficient access and utilization oflarge sets of computational resources. Our goal is to offer a balancedapproach that addresses data management and movement as well as scalable andparallel computation.

Today, it is clear that the future of supercomputing is network-centric, andlies in both the shared power of smaller, parallel web-serving systems andlarge, cooperating clusters of SMP servers. Rather than focusing solely ontraditional islands of computing power in a single location, Sun is bringingdisparate commercial and scientific communities the hardware they need toshare data and resources across the globe.

The SunFire 6800 Server and Sun StorEdge T3 systems are is a key parts ofthe installation at the Center of Excellence at the University of Calgary,and a key part of any Visualization and HPC solution.

Another interesting feature within the installation at the University ofCalgary is the Java 3D-enabled CAVE solution. Java 3D is an ApplicationProgramming Interface (API) that allows developers to quickly create 3Dapplications using the Java programming language. Java 3D allows developersto concentrate on their content by programming to a scene-graph model. Byusing Java 3D, developers get to program in Java, have access to ascene-graph, and get the many people-years of experience of taking advantageof OpenGL in the most efficient manner.

SCO: Why do you think Sun was chosen over the competition?

AKERBERG: Working technology, shared vision and partnership, and Sun'slong-term commitment in the Technical Computing segment.

SCO: Being as specific as you can, please tell us how UC will be utilizingSun technology.

UNGER: The University of Calgary is creating a virtual CyberCell which willbe displayed in a Java 3D technology-enabled CAVE(r) from FakeSpace SystemsInc. The relevant biochemistry will be displayed, and analyzed, within thecell. Also, a visible human will be displayed and biochemistry representedwithin it. In addition, work on enhancing their MAGPIE and BLUEJAYbioinformatics portals will be undertaken, as well as building a localportal between schools within Alberta (University of Calgary, University ofAlberta and University of Lethbridge), as well as tapping into the NRC CBRbioinformatics grid for collaborative projects.

SCO: How is Sun doing in the market for collaborative visualizationsolutions?

MOHAN: We view the collaborative visualization solutions market as rangingfrom individual desktop solutions to Small Work-group (5-10) solutions toLarge Group Visualization (25-50). Until recently, most of the deploymentactivity has been around Large Group Visualization solutions that cost$1M-2M which typically include custom display solutions and an expensive SGIsystem, which has limited the growth in this segment. Lately, we are seeinga lot of growth in Small Work-Group visualization solutions, as customersare trying to provide such technology to a broader group of users spreadacross their organization. Sun is benefiting from this trend, since the SunBlade 1000 workstations equipped with Expert3D graphics accelerators, havehit the mark with respect to price-performance. We have had severalsuccesses in the Petroleum industry with our Sun Blade 1000 systemsconfigured with dual Sun Expert3D graphics accelerators, used forCollaborative Visualization solutions.

SCO: Sun recently announced Sun Expert3D graphics accelerator support on theSun Fire 6800 server, what sort of impact do you see this having oncustomers and potential customers. Why should people take note of thisannouncement?

MOHAN: Support for Sun Expert3D graphics on the Sun Fire 6800, is the firstincarnation of product configurations which Sun is targeting at thetechnical markets which have both demanding computational and visualizationneeds. There are several markets in the HPC sector such as Life Sciences,Medical Research, CFD, etc.; where scientists and researchers run largesimulations while operating on extremely large data-sets, and rely onvisualization technology to enable them to drive the simulations, and verifytheir results. An integrated solution incorporating support for multipleExpert3Ds on a Sun Fire 6800, will enable increased interactivity with theirdatasets in a Collaborative Visualization environment, without having tomove their large datasets from their compute system to a separatevisualization system.

SCO: Is there anything you'd like to add?

MOHAN: This is just the beginning, and a sign of great things to come fromSun in this area. We are extremely excited about our role in this market,and look forward to introducing more powerful products that truly addressthe performance and quality needs of the visualization customers at pricepoints that will enable them to truly leverage such technologies acrosstheir organizations, reducing their development costs in the process.

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