I have read a paper by Leslie Roberts (Science 244:655-656 (1989)),
and want to know more about TRW's Fast Data Finder chip, and
sequence-comparison machines based on this chip. - Roberts told that
Applied Biosystems, Inc., had got a licence to the chip, and was about
making a machine based on it.
Please send me the complete name and address for TRW Inc., USA. I am
also interested in any information about this chip, and about the
Applied Biosystems sequence-comparison machine. (I did not get any
answer from Applied Biosystems when I asked by letter, perhaps
someone could tell me about an e-mail address I could try).
The chip mentioned by Leslie Roberts has 4 microprocessors in one
chip. Such chips could be tied together into a very long linear
microprocessor array, to perform sequence comparison, possibly by the
kind of exhaustive algorithms (dynamic programming algorithms). The
query-sequence is loaded into this microprocessor-array, and sequences
from the data base (for example GenBank, PIR, etc.) is fed through the
array like water in a hose. In this way a large query-sequence (or many
small query-sequences) can be compared against a large amount of
sequences in a short amount of time.
I would be very grateful to receive information about this and/or
similar chips and machines (except published papers about the CM
and DAP-machines older than 1992). Thanks in advance!
Geir Egil Hauge
(geirha at ifi.uio.no)
