The March 24th issue of Bioinform (subscription required) has an article on distributed computing entitled “Distributed Computing is Alive and Well on Pharma Desktops Despite Some Licensing and Tech Glitches”. Being somewhat skeptical of the usability of distributed computing in pharma environments, I was very curious to see what the article concluded.
According to the article, J&J, GSK, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis are all using the GridMP platform from United Devices (I was aware of three of those). Novartis, for example, is using their grid for virtual screening (I saw a presentation on their efforts a couple of years ago) with some degree of success, especially since there are no real IPC requirements in docking experiments.
In general, grids are being used for mining and similar applications, which do lend themselves well to using spare desktop cycles. I am still not completely convinced that grids are efficient enough to be used for serious crunching, especially when there is a time crunch.
The bulk of the article focuses on issues with licensing, which I whole heartedly agree with. Software company licensing models have not evolved with the times, partly due to a lack of market pressure, and partly due to an inability to identify just how to leverage modern HPC. Most licensing models still date back to the days of individual workstations and could really benefit from an upgrade.
In the end, I would agree that in certain cases distributed computing (using free desktop cycles) is a viable alternative for some tasks. If I were an IT manager, grid computing would be deployed to generate data, which can then be accessed when required for a specific project.
Grid Computing in Pharma – Bioinform (3/24/06)
The March 24th issue of Bioinform (subscription required) has an article on distributed computing entitled “Distributed Computing is Alive and Well on Pharma Desktops Despite Some Licensing and Tech Glitches”. Being somewhat skeptical of the usability of distributed computing in pharma environments, I was very curious to see what the article concluded.
According to the article, J&J, GSK, Novartis, and Sanofi-Aventis are all using the GridMP platform from United Devices (I was aware of three of those). Novartis, for example, is using their grid for virtual screening (I saw a presentation on their efforts a couple of years ago) with some degree of success, especially since there are no real IPC requirements in docking experiments.
In general, grids are being used for mining and similar applications, which do lend themselves well to using spare desktop cycles. I am still not completely convinced that grids are efficient enough to be used for serious crunching, especially when there is a time crunch.
The bulk of the article focuses on issues with licensing, which I whole heartedly agree with. Software company licensing models have not evolved with the times, partly due to a lack of market pressure, and partly due to an inability to identify just how to leverage modern HPC. Most licensing models still date back to the days of individual workstations and could really benefit from an upgrade.
In the end, I would agree that in certain cases distributed computing (using free desktop cycles) is a viable alternative for some tasks. If I were an IT manager, grid computing would be deployed to generate data, which can then be accessed when required for a specific project.
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