Dell EMC and Intel transform life science research with Bio-Medical Cloud
Bio-Medical Cloud at Cambridge University enhances patient care by transferring computational and data analytical results to clinics
Dell EMC and the University of Cambridge (UoC) have announced a new multi-million pound Bio-Medical Cloud service, one of the largest dedicated biomedical compute and data platforms in UK university research. The capabilities offered by the platform will accelerate research and computational medicine by allowing data analytical methods developed in the university setting to be used to improve patient outcomes in the clinic.
While the need for traditional High-Performance Computing (HPC) use cases still exists within medical research, a new researcher demographic of non-computational experts has emerged. To meet the need of this demographic, UoC needed a new platform which would enable non-IT specialised medical researchers to benefit from HPC capabilities, while still handling large scale data intensive workloads.
To meet the demand, UoC partnered with Dell EMC and Intel to design and implement a new paradigm of HPC systems. Through the enhanced performance of Dell HPC hardware solutions and access to the benefits of OpenStack virtualised technologies, university researchers are now able to process and model complex data with significantly improved flexibility and system usability.
Dell EMC has worked closely with Research Institutional Services at UoC to pioneer solutions that use the best features of commodity hardware and open-source technologies to deliver HPC solutions. The Cambridge Bio-Medical Cloud, powered by Dell compute and storage servers and Intel’s latest generation processors and NvRAM technologies coupled with high performance Ethernet networking, will deliver major compute and data analysis capabilities to the Cambridge bio-medical community.
'There’s a revolution occurring across scientific, technical and medical research disciplines, generating demand for platforms that can handle a large user-base of computational techniques and data intensive science,' said Bart Mellenbergh, director, HPC Dell EMC EMEA. 'Dell EMC offers HPC capabilities, accelerated by the latest hardware technology, to handle the excessive demands of large-scale data modelling while also providing additional flexibility and accessibility through open source cloud computing.'
Dr Paul Calleja, director, Research Computing at the UIS, University of Cambridge., added: 'The Cambridge Bio-Medical Cloud heralds a transformation in the manner in which Research Computing Services are being delivered. With the assistance of superior hardware and core technologies, this new platform will radically democratise access to large scale compute and data resources and ultimately contribute to significant advancements in the treatment discovery process.'
