LOS ANGELES – Cedars Sinai has installed 400 new servers from Sun Microsystems, enabling one of the largest academic medical centers in the country to quadruple its data-processing capability.

Hospital officials say all this extra processing could lead researchers to breakthrough treatments for life-threatening and chronic diseases.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is now using a Sun Grid Rack system. The grid includes 400 Sun Fire x64 servers, Sun StorageTek solutions and Sun N1 software pre-integrated by Sun Customer Ready Systems to process and analyze vast amounts of complex data.

Hospital officials expect to more than quadruple its previous data processing capacity while also decreasing cost and power consumption.

At the new Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, researchers are doing highly complex analyses of the proteins in patient blood samples to discover and develop treatments for cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, high cholesterol and other diseases that are based on an individual’s biochemical makeup and medical history.

Finding answers – new treatment possibilities – in a drop of blood could mean continued life for any one of Cedars Sinai patients.

“That’s the name of the game in our business,” said David Agus, an oncologist and director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars Sinai. “If you know the answer in advance, you’re going to do things a lot better.”

To undertake this task of knowing the answer before applying the treatment, Cedars-Sinai needed a supercomputer capable of massive computational power and data storage to process multiple terabytes of raw data daily and reveal patterns that could be correlated to clinical outcomes.

“Sun looked at the tasks and the computational needs we had and was able to provide an optimal solution. They were able to meet our needs at every level,” said Jonathan Katz, senior scientist and director of operations at the Spielberg Family Center.

The system is aiming to generate four terabytes of data daily this year – four times what was previously processed by the grid—and eight terabytes daily by 2008. The processing power enables researchers to analyze complex data sets in days rather than weeks or months and cross-compare data to uncover new disease connections.

Cedars-Sinai estimates it saved $60,000 and two months’ time by having the Sun Customer Ready Program integrate and deploy the pre-assembled grid. Moreover, the energy-efficient Sun servers provide further cost savings by scaling down to one-third their normal power when not active.

“We have a remarkable relationship with Sun,” Agus said. “The passion of the employees goes far beyond selling equipment. They offer to come in on weekends to help us. The enthusiasm and dedication is something I haven’t experienced with any company – ever.”