[Bioclusters] Workstation Selection for Bioinformatics Research

William Park bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:08:28 -0400


On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 12:39:34PM -0400, Chip Coward wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
>     I am a researcher in bioinformatics at Drexel University and we are
> setting up a computational lab for research and teaching in Computational
> Systems Biology/Bioinformatics. We are looking for workstations for our lab
> using existing software tools or developing new tools to perform molecular
> modeling/visualization (e.g. RasMol/Protein Explorer), searching the genome,
> stochastic modelling/cellular automata, ect. We are considering both SUN
> workstations and Dell workstations (Precision 450/Precision 650) although we
> would be open to consider other platforms if there are compelling reasons. I
> am writing to get input/information that will help us make a decision on
> platform selection. I am leaning toward selecting the Dell Workstation due
> to the theme that prevades these email lists about use of Linux which seems
> to be the way the bioinformatics community is heading. If we purchased the
> Dell system I would configure it to support both Windows and Linux under the
> assumption that by supporting both operating systems, we would have more
> options/flexibility for tool selection.
> 
>    I would appreciate any thoughts or opinions that would help in our
> platform selection.

Definitely not Sun.  Why not "build your own" around Intel/AMD cpus?
Start with good motherboard, single-CPU, and one IDE disk per cable.
This will be cheap, even if you have to throw it away.  See what kind of
performance you get, and what you REALLY need.  Then, upgrade
incrementally, ie. SCSI disk if I/O is the bottleneck, dual-CPU if your
coffee break is not long enough, etc.

-- 
William Park, Open Geometry Consulting, <opengeometry@yahoo.ca>
Linux solution for data management and processing.