Matters arising from IBM Corp’s announcement of the Shared Memory System Power/4 four-processor parallel version of the RS/6000 (CI No 2,054) include an agreement with BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals Inc, a San Antonio, Texas company dedicated to the discovery and development of new cancer-fighting drugs, which will be an early user of the new machine, while the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute at Florida State University in Tallahassee is also planning to evaluate it. Under the agreement with BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals, IBM will become involved in a joint effort dedicated to the development of parallel computing hardware and software for the design of a new generation of cancer treatment drugs. BioNumerik will be using a parallel cluster of 20 IBM RS/6000 workstations, a 32-way IBM Power Visualization System and Power/4 systems, endeavouring to reduce significantly the costly and lengthy process of drug development. BioNumerik hopes to exploit the parallel computing power of the clustered workstations, the Visualization System and several systems under development to create and run its proprietary molecular simulation codes. The applications are designed to produce extremely accurate information on the molecular behaviour of new drugs. Traditionally, drug development research has been performed by synthesizing thousands of chemical compounds and screening each of them for their potential clinical value, but these days, drug companies are increasingly turning to computer simulation – as well as being quicker, it’s much less messy and reduces the risk of things going bang. BioNumerik says it will use the IBM technologies in a co-operative processing environment to improve drug development. Even with IBM’s presently very limited current parallel processing technologies, BioNumerik researchers can simulate complex molecular structures and properties, and measure their behaviour within environments designed to mimic the internal working of the human body. They will then be able to analyse the data, isolate specific chemical reactions and guide pivotal experimental research.
