Cox Business light-speed computer connection provides TGen with fastest supercomputer link

Aug 13 2010

A Cox Business light-speed computer connection coupled with advanced, military-grade technology now provides Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) with the nation's fastest supercomputer link among life-sciences facilities.

“Every advance in computer technology helps us move ever-closer to finding new and better ways to diagnose-and help select treatment plans for-patients who are counting on us to improve their quality of life”

This enhanced capability moves data 100 times faster between TGen and Saguaro 2, Arizona State University's (ASU) supercomputer, accelerating TGen's molecular research into diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and many types of cancer. The transfer and processing of data sets containing trillions of bits of DNA information that once took more than a week will now be done in just a few hours.

"Every advance in computer technology helps us move ever-closer to finding new and better ways to diagnose-and help select treatment plans for-patients who are counting on us to improve their quality of life," said Dr. Jeffrey Trent, TGen's President and Research Director.

"The field of biomedical research presents one of the greatest opportunities in transferring massive amounts of data from point to point. Our Cox LightWave Service accomplishes this quickly, and with 100 percent security, over our wholly-owned network. It's ideal for enterprises like TGEN, ASU and datacenters that transmit and receive information in terabytes," said Hyman Sukiennik, Vice President-Cox Business Arizona.

Dr. David Southwell, Chief Technology Officer of Obsidian Strategics adds, "Cox Business' LightWave Service, enhanced with a new technology designed for mission-critical military applications by Obsidian, achieves near perfect utilization of a 10Gb Ethernet connection by saturating the wavelength with a sustained flow of data, essentially filling the pipe, while at the same time encrypting the flow of information to ensure patient privacy."

Reducing transmission time will become more critical in the future, with TGen's next generation sequencers easily producing as much as 30 terabytes of data per experiment, or the equivalent of an iPod with 15 million songs.

Lee Seabrooke, ASU's Director of Knowledge Informatics said, "The High Performance Computing Initiative at ASU, along with our extensive academic and scientific resources, uniquely positions ASU to be able to address the most critical challenges of our time."