Columbus, Ohio, and Palo Alto, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (nasdq:SUNW) and OSC (Ohio Supercomputer Center) today announced OSC's selection as a Sun Center of Excellence in High Performance Computing Environments (COE-HPCE). The Sun COE-HPCE is a collaborative project between OSC, The Ohio State University (OSU), University of Cincinnati/Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and University of Akron. The combined investment totals more than $7 million.
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"Sun has chosen OSC because of its leadership in HPC, distributed computing, and scientific portals," said Kim Jones, Vice President, Global Education and Research for Sun Microsystems. "This partnership will help establish a new computing paradigm for the State of Ohio, using portal-based interfaces so researchers can access their work from anywhere, anytime, over any device."
"Being able to say that OSC is a Sun Center of Excellence builds national recognition for us and our collaborators," said Charlie Bender, Executive Director. "This grant provides us the opportunity to reach new constituencies to accelerate the use of information technologies and strengthen Ohio's global competitiveness."
As a Sun Center of Excellence, OSC will develop and integrate science and business portals, focusing on life science applications. A collaborative testbed infrastructure and distributed storage from Sun will be available to researchers working on a variety of applications. Major Sun installations will be linked throughout Ohio over OSC's Internet2 network to allow researchers and industry partners to experiment with high performance computing applications. In addition, Sun's visualization technology will allow users to "see" the results of their research.
"This announcement is an important recognition that higher education is the economic engine of the 21st century. We are grateful to Sun Microsystems for its partnership in ensuring that Ohio's research and technology infrastructure continues to strengthen our state's intellectual and economic competitiveness," said Roderick Chu, Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor.
"The Sun Center will add to Ohio's tools to become a leader in important research growth areas such as bioinformatics, genomics and computational chemistry," said Frank Samuel, Ohio's Science and Technology Advisor to the Governor. "Sun's investment demonstrates that Ohio's sustained program of investment in university-based science and technology has allowed it to reap rewards and recognition by major industry leaders in the technologies of the future."
For both bioinformatics and cheminformatics researchers, Sun's computing resources will be used to generate and contribute to the wealth of chemical and genomic information. Ohio researchers, including those from OSU's Medical Center, will be able to use the computing and storage power of the OSC Center of Excellence to develop better tools to deal with disease. Cincinnati Children's Hospital, a planned distributed center, is already exploring high performance computing to deal with pediatrics and disease.
"UC is committed to excelling in research areas like biogenetic sciences and nanotechnology, as well as multidisciplinary efforts addressing cancer research, systems modeling, and bioengineering," said Joseph Steger, University of Cincinnati President. "We welcome the opportunity to share genomic information and resources with our Children's Hospital."
Thomas Boat, MD, Chairman of the UC Department of Pediatrics, added, "Without these tools, the scientific advancements in genomic-medicine will never be fully realized. We are grateful to the Ohio Board of Regents and Sun Microsystems for their support of our efforts in pediatric genomic-medicine. With this support, we look forward to accelerating the pace at which we find cures for the diseases that affect our children."
Business applications will be driven by the interests of business partners and by the expected development of a Center for Global Business Information Management and Computational Modeling at the University of Akron.
Bruce Barnes, Nationwide Vice President of Technology Strategy and Planning, commented, "The creation and development of a Sun COE-HPCE center in our own backyard, leverages the proven strengths of the regional technology community, and one of our key technology solutions providers will definitely be an asset to Nationwide as we further our business-centered technology research initiatives."
The Center of Excellence will also allow a variety of industry and business partners from around the U.S. to experiment with distributed management and portal technologies.
"The Sun COE-HPCE testbed could provide an attractive way for us to benchmark and demonstrate the viability of new technologies and approaches in a non-production high performance Internet2 network environment," said Robert DePalma, Strategic Accounts Executive for Exodus.
Sun In Education
Sun is a leading provider of open network computing solutions for colleges and universities around the world, powering academic, research and high performance computing systems, campus administration, digital libraries and student instruction systems. In addition, Sun is committed to connecting the world's students to the Internet, beginning with primary and secondary schools and extending to all levels of higher education. For information about Sun in Education, please visit http://www.sun.com/edu
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The Network Is The Computer," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc., (Nasdaq:SUNW), to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to dot-com their businesses. With $19.2 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.
About OSC
OSC, a state-supported resource, provides a reliable high performance computing and communications infrastructure for a diverse, statewide/regional community including education, academic research, industry, and state government. As a shared resource, OSC accelerates the use of information technologies to strengthen the state's attractiveness and global competitiveness. OSC empowers its academic, industrial, and government partners to make Ohio the education and technology state of the future.
About CHMC/UC
Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati's Department of Pediatrics are leaders in pediatric care and research. The grant from the Ohio Board of Regents and Sun Microsystems will create the first supercomputing center in the U.S. dedicated to pediatric research. The Medical Center's 350 researchers and other researchers in the region now have these tools available to support their scientific discovery.
