Supercomputer performs prostate surgery
A supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) recently piloted a laser to perform prostate surgery on a dog. The operation was done in Houston without the intervention of a human surgeon while the Lonestar supercomputer, a Dell Linux Cluster with 5,840 processors, was in Austin. According to TACC, 'the procedure was the culmination of three years of research and development into the algorithms, computer codes, imaging technology, and cyberinfrastructure.' Please note that even if the intervention was a success, the dog ultimately died. But the researchers are confident that their approach could lead to specific treatments in five to ten years for humans. In fact, they think this is the future of surgery, bringing engineering tools into medicine. Fascinating research!!! But read more...