Selecting a processor for computations in molecular biophysics

✍ Scribed by Philip E. Bourne; Wayne A. Hendrickson

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 826 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0010-4825
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-4825(88)90021-2

✦ Synopsis

A number of relatively low-cost processors are now available which employ architectural features previously found only on very expensive supercomputers.

The speed of these computers makes it possible to reduce the time to solution of certain problems and to resolve large problems that previously were too time consuming to perform locally. A brief overview of this type of processor is given and the implications for computations in molecular biophysics are discussed in reference to the results of a benchmark that uses the refinement of a protein structure from X-ray crystallographic data.

Vector processor Molecular biophysics PROTIN

Benchmark

Protein refinement Array processor Parallel processors Multiple processors PROLSQ * Linpack is a commonly used set of Fortran programs for solving a dense system of equations and uses predominantly floating point numbers.