The CBRC is a state-of-the-art computational infrastructure for scientists to apply advanced computer algorithms to biological problems.

Toward reaching this goal, the CBRC has purchased and maintains a 16 node 132 CPU computing cluster combined with multi terabit storage capacity. The cluster is a LINUX-based system aimed at supporting a host of biodatabases as well as applications in drug discovery, NMR, x-ray crystallography, DNA microarray analysis, bioinformatics, image analysis and molecular modeling.

The cluster hardware is a vertical stack of 16 compute node Dell model PE1950 computers each with Xeon Dual Quad-Core (a.k.a. Clovertown architecture) 2.33GHz CPUs plus one master node. The master node, a Dell PE2950,uses Dual Quad-Core Xeon CPUs and hosts the job scheduler software that tasks the compute nodes.

The CBRC encourages broad usage of the cluster. The CBRC oversight committee has established usage policies and will review and approve requests for installation of specific applications.

The CBRC cluster runs open source and commercial software. Commercial software licenses tend to scale with the number of CPUs and are therefore expensive. CBRC will support some commercial software applications approved by the oversight committee.

Another goal of the CBRC is to support software development. CBRC will provide programming tools in the form of compilers, scripting software, web-based interfaces. In addition CBRC will provide user support in the form of level 2 programmers who will aid users for particular applications and or run software for users.

Advanced users expecting to consume large amounts of time will be expected to present proposals for usage to the oversight committee. CBRC will attempt to support all usage up to the point of physical saturation.

OCIO-IS will house and manage the hardware of the system. Software installation will be the level one programmer's responsibility but decisions about which software to install will come through the oversight committee.

The primary strategic aim of the CBRC is to remove computational barriers to research progress. At the same time the CBRC is a first time venture in managing a campus-wide computing resource run by and for researchers. The hardware, software and management will require regular input from the users.