Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!uupsi!fernwood!apple!mips!spool.mu.edu!news.nd.edu!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!purdue!haven.umd.edu!mimsy!ukc!sss3 From: sss3@ukc.ac.uk Newsgroups: bionet.biology.computational Subject: Re: Computer Systems for the Life Sciences !?!?! Message-ID: <9105111101.AA27000@genbank.bio.net> Date: 11 May 91 10:42:25 GMT Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu Distribution: bionet Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Lines: 57 Approved: comp-bio-moderator@genbank.bio.net Our department has access to an AMT DAP 32x32 processor array which is used for DNA and Protein sequence analysis using software produced by Dr. J.Collins and Dr. A.Coulson of Edinburgh University. My research is aimed at a similar program using Kent's MIMD Meiko Compting Surface. My speciality is in OCCAM programming on transputers. I have no desire to go back to sequential programming because I feel it hinders my thinking, yes I am a bit of a CSP fan. There is a lot of talk about using functional languages with implicit parallelism, or using sequential languages with parallel extensions. I feel this to be a mistake, OCCAM is proving itself to be easy, logical and secure, and also offers a higher degree of performance due to it's explicit parallel nature. On the question of ADA, that language, although closely realated to CSP as is OCCAM it is proving to be less efficient than OCCAM because it takes 60-100 times as long to perform a context switch between concurrent processes, and allows output guards on channels which consumes a lot of bandwidth slowing down the communication process for example. Results so far are promising, I am using the Needleman/Wunsch alogorithm at present just to test various topologies. In the case of the Meiko I can reconfigure the processors from software allowing great flexibility and control over the distribution of data. I am six months into the project and have achieved a speed of 12000 comparisons a minute on a pipeline of 16 workers. I have access to 90 transputers, soon to be increased to nearly 200 when we get the new daemon fitted to our sun host allowing us to use both our cabinets. With the arrival of the T9000 series I envisage at least an order or magnitude increase in performance being within reach, not to mention the ability to write software that is no longer dependant on the number of links associated with the transputer design. If all goes according to plan we should get an array of 32 T9000 when they reach the production stage, at least that is the aim. A new version of OCCAM has been produced (OCCAM 91) to take advantage of the increased performance. At the moment BioComputing here at Kent does not have much priority, I am the only postgraduate working in the field, I hope to see interest grow as more people realise the potential of the transputer and OCCAM. ************************************************************************ Shane Sturrock, BioComputing, Biological Laboratory, University of Kent, \ Canterbury, (}:-( That is Biological Captain. Great Britain. / ************************************************************************ -- --- Moderator --- Domain: curtiss@umiacs.umd.edu Phillip Curtiss UUCP: uunet!mimsy!curtiss UMIACS - Univ. of Maryland Phone: +1-301-405-6710 College Park, Md 20742