Knome and Silicon Mechanics have announced a partnership to bring the knoSYS100, an end-to-end human genome interpretation system, to market in Q2, 2013. Under the partnership, Knome will supply the core genomics software for the system, including its knoSOFT genome interpretation application and kGAP NGS informatics engine. Silicon Mechanics will construct and support the system’s turn-key grid computing hardware platform, a Lustre-based storage system, and server systems built around the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family.
Working closely with Intel and Knome, Silicon Mechanics developed the hardware platform for the knoSYS100, which integrates seven separate servers, all optimised to run Knome’s interpretation software and informatics engine. Knome and Silicon Mechanics opted to base the hardware platform on the Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 product family, due to its fast RAM throughput and the availability of hyperthreading, which greatly improves parallel processing across multiple compute cores within a processor. The high-performance computing cluster offers four compute nodes, each with two 8-core/16-thread, 2.4 GHz, 64-bit Intel Xeon E5-2665 processors with 20MB cache, capable of 500 Gflops per node (2,000 Tflops in total). The knoSYS100 relies on a Lustre-based storage system for high I/O bandwidth. All the nodes are connected with InfiniBand networking.
Customers of the knoSYS100 will purchase a complete system from Knome. ‘We each will focus on our relative strengths, but the client will receive a turnkey system that is essentially plug-and-play, removing the hassles associated with integrating multiple hardware and software components,’ said Jonas Lee, Knome’s SVP of marketing.
