Tesla-based Chinese supercomputer 1st to simulate swine flu
updated 04:00 pm EST, Thu November 10, 2011
Atomic-level computer re-creation maps H1N1 bug
Chinese researchers have used a supercomputer based on NVIDIA Tesla GPUs to simulate the H1N1 virus, also known as the swine flu. Researchers at the Institute of Process Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS-IPE) have used the Mole 8.5 GPU as a "computational microscope" to peer into the atomic structure of the virus. In doing so, the researchers hope to better understand the virus and then create the anti-viral drugs which can control epidemics.
The Mole-8.5 GPU supercomputer is comprised of 288 server nodes with more than 2,200 NVIDIA Tesla cores each. Together, they can simulate 770 picoseconds per day.
The Mole-8.5 isn't the first supercomputer the Chinese have built using the NVIDIA hardware. In November 2010, they used 7,168 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 GPUs in the 2.5 petaflops Tianhe-1A. For a short time, this computer held the world's record for being the world's fastest supercomputer.
The H1N1 influenza outbreak was an epidemic that was spread throughout the world in 2009. In the US, 3,900 people died from the illness.
