The Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (C2B2) has begun a major upgrade of its Advanced Research Computing core.

In the coming months, C2B2 will launch a new computing cluster that boasts 212 teraflops of performance. This figure is nearly nine times the total computing capacity of its current computing platform, called Titan. The new system will have 6,336 CPU-cores, over 70,000 CUDA-cores (GPU), and 22 TB of total system memory. The primary source of funding for this new system is a High-End Instrumentation grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The Advanced Research Computing Services (ARCS) group at the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics supports research at the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology as well as the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Institute for Cancer Genetics, and the JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center. This expansion of the ARCS high-performance computing environment will enable Columbia University Medical Center to meet the university's quickly growing needs for analysis of high-throughput biomedical research data.

As the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology moves in the coming months to become a full Department of Systems Biology, the new high-performance computing platform will also support the recruitment of several new faculty members.