unasmith@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Una Smith) (01/17/90)
Keith Steward asks: >Our department has access to a couple of Silicon Graphics >workstations for use in molecular biology. Can anyone tell me what >molecular modelling and sequence analysis software is available for >these beautiful machines. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) puts out a free catalog of third-party software available for their workstations. Nothing in the catalog is cheap. For freeware or shareware, I suggest you contact the nearest computer graphics lab (usually found in CS departments) and aask them to keep an eyeout when they browse through archives, etc. In any case, the SGI catalog, "Geometry Partners Directory," of nearly two years ago lists 16 molecular modelling software packages in its table of contents: Amber NIEHS CHARMm Polygen, Corp. CHIRON University of Montreal Discover Biosym Technologies, Inc. GAUSSIAN 85 University of Illinois GEMM National Institues of Health GRINCH BioCryst Ltd. Insight Biosym Technologies, Inc. MENDYL Tripos Associates, Inc. MIDAS UCSF MMS UCSD MOLCAL Technische Hochschule Darmstadt QUANTA Polygen, Corp. RIBBONS BioCryst, Ltd. SYBYL Tripos Associates, Inc. TURBOMOLE University of Karlsruhe Punctuation is as in the catalog. By now there are sure to be more products. Please note that only molecular modelling packages are listed, since this is a directory of "Geometry Partners," i.e., extremely high-end graphics software. Because sequence analyses are not inherently visual tasks (yet), they are naturally not listed here. SGI is sure to have a similar directory of non-graphics packages for its powerful server stations; contact your local sales representative for details. I'd like to put in a plug for Silicon Graphics. I have one of their newest line of computers, and it is incredibly fast. SGI has very good educational discounts too, so good that had we bought a DEC MicroVax instead, we would have gotten less than one fifth (!) the power for the same money. Even if you don't need the scorchingly fast graphics hardware, if you're looking at high-end workstations, you should be looking at SGI. Enjoy!