Definition
Anton is a special-purpose supercomputer architecture designed by D. E. Shaw Research to dramatically accelerate molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of biomolecular systems. Anton performs massively parallel computation on a set of identical MD-specific ASICs that interact in a tightly coupled manner using a specialized high-speed communication network. Anton enabled, for the first time, the simulation of proteins at an atomic level of detail for periods on the order of a millisecond – about two orders of magnitude beyond the previous state of the art – allowing the observation of important biochemical phenomena that were previously inaccessible to both computational and experimental study.
Discussion
Introduction
Classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations give scientists the ability to trace the motions of biological molecules at an atomic level of detail. Although MD simulations have helped yield deep insights into the molecular mechanisms of biological processes in a...
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Dror, R.O., Young, C., Shaw, D.E. (2011). Anton, A Special-Purpose Molecular Simulation Machine. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_199
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_199
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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