PARALLEL COMPUTING IN BIOMEDICAL-RESEARCH

Scalable parallel computer architectures provide the computational per formance needed for advanced biomedical computing problems. The Nation al Institutes of Health have developed a number of parallel algorithms and techniques useful in determining biological structure and functio n. These applications include processing electron micrographs to deter mine the three-dimensional structure of viruses, calculating the solve nt-accessible surface area of proteins to help predict the three-dimen sional conformation of these molecules from their primary structures, and searching for homologous DNA or amino acid sequences in large biol ogical databases. Timing results demonstrate substantial performance i mprovements with parallel implementations compared with conventional s equential systems.