Sandia National Laboratories, based in Albuquerque, NM, has released its Cplant cluster software to the public.
Cplant enables users to modularly assemble off-the-shelf desktop computer components into a supercomputer. The software is modeled after the system software that Sandia developed for the ASCI Red supercomputer built by Intel.
Developer Neil Pundit said the open-source release will allow researchers free access to a scalable, Linux-based, off-the-shelf computer, while improvements made by new users will be communicated back to Sandia.
Release 1.0 of the software can be downloaded from the Cplant website at www.cs.sandia.gov/ cplant and totals approximately 43 MB. Users must agree to software licensing terms before downloading.
The National Resource for Cell Analysis and Modeling, located at the Center for Biomedical Imaging Technology at the University of Connecticut Health Center, has released a beta version of Virtual Cell 3.0, a computational framework for modeling cell biological processes.
New features include a complete redesign of the software architecture and interface, enhanced usability, integration of the data export feature, and enhanced performance through the client side cache.
Virtual Cell is available at www.nrcam.uchc.edu.
Guildford, UK-based ID Business Solutions has released ActivityBase 5.0, a suite of products for chemical and biological data management.
New ActivityBase 5.0 modules include StructureBase for chemical compound registration; ReactionBase for storing, managing, and searching reactions and reaction schemes; Natural Products to manage the process of finding and isolating an active compound from a natural organism; and the SARgen suite of products to query ActivityBase for biological and chemical information.