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Cycle Computing Caps Record 2012 with IDC HPC Innovation Excellence Award

By R&D Editors | January 16, 2013

Cycle Computing provisioned an over 50,000-core utility supercomputer in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud for Schrödinger and Nimbus Discovery to accelerate lead identification via virtual screening.New York, NY — Cycle Computing announced it has ended its record-breaking 2012 by winning the IDC HPC Innovation Excellence Award. IDC recognized Cycle’s 50,000-core utility supercomputer run in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud for pharmaceutical companies Schrödinger and Nimbus Discovery. The unprecedented cluster completed 12.5 processor years in less than three hours with a cost of less than $4,900 per hour to facilitate computational drug discovery, and was recognized by IDC for its impressive return on investment.

The award capped a year of dramatic client growth and utility supercomputing accomplishments for Cycle, who recorded an 85 percent growth in new clients, as compared to 80 percent in 2011. Building off its storied success in the life sciences sector throughout 2012, the company has increased its sales and support staff and has expanded across markets, including energy, manufacturing, academic and government research and financial services.

Cycle’s 2012 business highlights include:

  • Impressive Company Growth: Cycle Computing expanded its client base and now provides software for HPC computes in the cloud for two of the four top BioTech companies and two of the three leading NextGen Sequencing giants. The company’s client roster also grew to include three of the five large annuity/life insurance firms and two of the three big finance companies.
  • Pharmaceutical Industry Dominance: Six of the big eight pharmaceutical firms are Cycle clients, as well as many leading life science start-ups and science companies, including Schrödinger, who has commissioned Cycle to run on-going routine runs on top of their impressive 50k core cluster initial run.
  • Supercomputing Innovation: Using its software products to create HPC environments from 50 to 50,000 cores, Cycle completed a record-breaking 50,000 core cluster supercomputing environment run on the AWS cloud with cost under $4,900 per hour at peak requiring no upfront capital.
  • Noteworthy Industry Recognition: In addition to IDC’s HPC Innovation Excellence Award, Cycle’s software also garnered HPCwire’s Editor’s Choice Award for “Best Use of HPC in the Cloud.”
  • Inaugural Big Science Challenge: Created to give scientists and researchers unprecedented free access to utility supercomputing to benefit society, Cycle’s Big Science Challenge winner Victor Ruotti of the Morgridge Institute for Research, successfully completed over one million compute hours in less than a week. The computations will be used to begin constructing a knowledgebase indexing system for stem cells and their derivatives to speed development of potential therapies.

“At Cycle, we believe that many of the world’s impossible scientific, engineering, and risk management problems become possible with access to the right compute infrastructure. This IDC award reflects an incredible year for Cycle, full of many milestones in helping humanity conquer new science through utility supercomputing,” said Jason Stowe, CEO, Cycle Computing. “As we kick off 2013, we’ll continue our leadership in delivering more software solutions to the growing market for technical computing, especially the increasing number of applications that need to finish strategic analysis at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional options, using 50 to 50,000 cores. Cycle’s products are uniquely poised to increase our customer’s agility and technological leadership by making previously impossible workloads possible.”

“In an industry that is evolving as rapidly as HPC, it’s fascinating to be a part of the creativity and innovation we’ve seen in the past year,” said Chirag Dekate, an analyst with IDC. “Cycle Computing’s impressive 50,000 run for Schrödinger and Nimbus Discovery demonstrated a strong ROI from the use of HPC, and we were pleased to recognize their accomplishment.”

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