Barcelona's StarLife supercomputer to boost medical research

StarLife, a supercomputer capable of storing 10 million gigas of data and processing 133 billion operations per second (132.8 teraflops) is now up and running.

The computer, which is housed in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), will be used for biomedical research, the development of medicines, and treatment of illnesses.

A joint project of the BSC, the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), StarLife was presented in Barcelona on Wednesday.

"Adaptable to various needs," says BSC head

Costing 1.7 million euros, the main feature of StarLife is that it is "easily reconfigurable and adaptable to various needs," said the BSC head of operations, Sergi Girona.

The computer will interpret and run simulations of the data generated by hospitals and research centers, which BSC head, Mateo Valero, called "a small but important step."

Meanwhile, IRB head, Francesc Posas, said his institute will use StarLife to study the molecular structure of DNA and cancer genomes, with a focus on personalized medicine.

The results produced by the computer will be available to researchers all over the world through the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA), said CRG head, Luis Serrano.

The StarLife computer will also provide complementary functions in the computational ecosystem that includes the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer, also housed at the BSC.