In the first project of its kind in Northern Ireland, Fujitsu has invested £1.1million in a new High Performance Computing service to support the development of the local knowledge economy, particularly small and medium sized enterprises.
The powerful technology can process massive amounts of information much more quickly and has been used in cyber-security and life sciences – including in the diagnosis of cancer.
PathXL, a Belfast-based spin out company from Queen’s University, analyses tumour tissue more rapidly using the computer system created by Japanese IT firm Fujitsu.
Professor Peter Hamilton from PathXL said the work involved some of the largest images in computing and needed the special software.
Fujitsu executive Newland McKelvey said: “What once took weeks takes days and what once took a day takes hours.”
The system is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses which do not have the resources to develop their own high performance system and is accessed using a web browser.