The 64-bit (64 billion dollars) question
(See articles at http://www.junkdna.com/new_citations.html )
Apple/Genentech (A/G) BLAST is an enhanced, platform-specific optimization of NCBI's standalone Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) developed by Apple's Advanced Computation Group... BLASTn (which finds similarities between nucleotide sequences) for the PowerPC G4/G5 processors and Mac OS X [now running with Tiger...]
posted by Dr. Andras J. Pellionisz at 9:52 AM
2 Comments:
Stand-alone 64-bit "hyper-number-crunchers" for non-licenceable NCBI (US Gov.) Internet-database?FractoGene proposes a different business model (US Patent Pending) - comment by Andras Pellionisz, Dec.5.th 2004
9:55 AM
Apple is now not alone with 64 bit "PC". AMD's 65-bit "Octeron" chip and Intel's "Itanium" is out for years. However, Microsoft is still not really out with the 64-bit version of Windows; what is the worth of a PC with a 64-bit CPU without an OS?
Nonetheless, both HP (Compaq) and even Fry's already sells "64-bit PC" (both with AMD chip) and Dell's recent jump in stock prices indicates that they will join the fray.
The crucial question: Is there any compelling reason to plunge into heavy numbercrunching (expensive...)?
There are two. Games, as usual for the PC market driven by the young.
For the PC market, driven by the industry, full genome analysis is the one, since a) A 32-bit system can access only 4 gigabytes of memory. (Not enough even for the genome of the rice, onion, etc, with annotation not even enough for human DNA). b) breakthrough algorithms (such as FractoGene) are really "CPU intensive".
In the past, if you wanted to go with 64-bit processing with a PC, the only choice was Apple.
It is a huge issue of key investment, when and by what compani(es) and busdev/marketing strategy (not if) the Apple-monopoly will be broken.
What do you think?
10:06 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home