The Jackson Laboratory is requesting funding for the development of a Shared Scientific Computing Resource solely for research use. Research at the laboratory is accelerating and information pertaining to the various JAX mutants and mouse strains is accumulating at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, access to much of this information is now difficult for many members of the Research Staff and much of the outside scientific community. The addition of a scientific computing resource dedicated to research use will permit better data storage, access, manipulation, analyses and early sharing of results. About three years ago, the Laboratory realized that its DEC PDP-11/70 and IAS operating system were nearing the end of their useful lives. At that time the Director initiated a study of research computing needs. Based on Staff input and consultant advice, it was decided to select the UNIX operating system and to purchase a DEC VAX-11/750, which was placed in service approximately eighteen months ago. Recently the Laboratory recruited seven young investigators, trained in molecular techniques, to the Research Staff. These new investigators, together with the established molecular biologists and biochemists, perceive a rapidly emerging requirement for molecular modeling computer graphics as an essential tool for their research programs. The Jackson Laboratory lacks this capability at this time. The rapid rate at which members of the Research Staff have proceeded to gather information and their increased need to interact with the data collected, have produced a near crisis situation, even though the old PDP-11/70 is still in service along with the newer VAX-11/750. Researchers must now compete with one another and with other users within the Laboratory for computing time on a system that regularly approaches saturation. Research Staff members require extensive computing time and extended computing capability, not only for data entry, storage and analysis (see research descriptions, Genetics and Physiology), but also for long database searches and molecular modeling studies (see research description - Biochemistry and Molecular Biology). To alleviate these problems, The Jackson Laboratory is requesting funds to purchase a DEC VAX-8200 computing system, with database management and graphics capabilities, and an IRIS 2400 Turbo Workstation (Silican Graphics, Inc.), a graphics processor capable of sophisticated molecular modeling.
