How Semiconductor Innovation Could Help Prevent The Next Pandemic
By Jim Elliott, Samsung Semiconductor
Over the past 6 months the world has been focused on the singular objective of establishing treatments, vaccines, and containment strategies however what nobody anticipated was how the tech world would rise to the challenge presented by Covid-19. While cutting edge responders and vital workers put their lives on the line, researchers and researchers relied on expert system (AI) for answers. In simple months, emerging technologies have been rolled out and leveraged to full effect to vastly boost calculating power, dramatically increase access to high-performance computing (HPC), and speed up research by orders of magnitude. AI and HPC are being leveraged to not just examine and develop treatments but likewise to produce prospective vaccines, manage shutdowns and reopenings, evaluate and allow access to digital medical records, and even to help establish better face masks.
Samsung Semiconductor innovation has actually played an especially essential role in the fight versus Covid-19. Samsung technology powers numerous of the most innovative programs and AI platforms that are helping scientists conduct research study and attain breakthroughs at a speed that would have been impossible just a couple of years ago.
One popular example of Samsung tech in action is the Covid-19 High Efficiency Computing Consortium. This consortium is a public-private initiative of IBM, the White Home Office of Science and Innovation Policy, and the US Department of Energy that is offering open door to HPC for groups investigating and battling the coronavirus. The consortium harnesses supercomputing resources from personal companies, national labs, universities, and others to produce an ever-expanding HPC system that (as of this writing) boasts 4.2 million CPU cores, 43,000 GPUs, and 600TB of Samsung’s brand-new HBM2 high-bandwidth memory, supplying 430 petaflops of processing power. This massive calculate power makes it possible for researchers studying COVID-19 to get the responses they require in hours or days rather of weeks or months.
One of numerous interesting projects using the consortium’s HPC system is the Aaron Diamond AIDS Proving Ground (ADARC) at Columbia University. ADARC is studying neutralizing antibodies from convalescent COVID-19 donors in order to establish SARS-CoV-2 reducing the effects of antibodies that can be utilized in therapies such as monoclonal antibody treatments or “passive” immunization. Another research study team using the HPC system is led by Ryan Wang at Northeastern University. Wang’s team is studying how human contacts and voluntary contact tracing can affect the spread of COVID-19 utilizing complex simulations. Their research study might supply essential insight into how to a lot of successfully implement contact tracing in order to consist of the spread of the infection.
Another sophisticated AI system that leverages Samsung tech is Nvidia’s HBM2-equipped DGX A100. This system, which makes use of 320GB of Samsung’s brand-new 2.4 Gbps HBM2, consolidates the power of a 5-petaflop data center onto a single platform. The extremely first DGX A100 system began operation at the Argonne National Lab in Might of 2020 and is being utilized to conduct COVID-19 research study.
Other Nvidia GPUs incorporating Samsung tech are likewise being used at Oxford Nanopore Technologies in the UK, where they are helping scientists series entire infection genomes in just 7 hours, at Plotly for real-time infection rate analysis, and at the National Institutes of Health for COVID-19 category and reconstruction of infection spike protein structures.
At Oak Ridge National Lab, Nvidia V100 GPUs powered by Samsung HBM2 are being utilized to examine a billion potential drug substances each day. By early March, Oak Ridge had the ability to determine 77 various small-molecule drug compounds that are likely to bind to the infection’ spike protein and possibly inhibit its entry into host cells.
At the same time, Lawrence Livermore National Lab is updating its ‘Corona’ supercomputer using AMD MI50 GPUs which are likewise equipped with Samsung HBM2. The upgrade will nearly double the supercomputer’s peak computer system power and will be used for molecular modeling in assistance of COVID-19 research, potentially resulting in brand-new designs for both antibodies and little particles for rehabs.
While the list of Covid-19 research study projects leveraging Samsung tech is seemingly limitless, the effect of semiconductor innovation is being felt well beyond the laboratory. For instance, the pandemic is likewise creating demand for high-bandwidth video streaming for virtual interaction in between clients and frontline healthcare personnel. By supplying server DRAM solutions with greater bandwidth and greater memory density per server, Samsung is assisting to meet those needs also.
The Covid-19 pandemic is an ongoing crisis that is presenting an extreme obstacle to both our medical and research study neighborhoods. I’m happy of the method Samsung and the semiconductor industry as a whole have risen to the obstacle of supporting caretakers and scientists by rapidly presenting the next generation of innovative innovations. As a result, lives have actually been saved, and the impact of the pandemic will, ideally, be blunted.
For the time being, the pandemic is still raging and being contented is not a choice. It’s also ended up being clear that the risk of future such occasions is high– that this could occur all over again in 10, 20, thirty years or more. Our market should continue to push boundaries and accelerate the rate of development so that next time we can be more prepared.
Picture a future in which AI can assist not just anticipate but also prevent pandemics. And ought to future pandemics emerge, picture leading the video game with broad-spectrum protease inhibitors and other little molecule drugs, or potentially having universal vaccines for coronaviruses, Ebola, and influenzas on the all set to deploy at the very first hint of an outbreak. As semiconductor innovation continues to develop, these goals might well become truth. It is my belief that Samsung Semiconductor Inc. and the semiconductor market on the whole can play a pivotal function in developing a more ready and more resilient world.
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