Chinese Lab Speeds Through Genome Processing With GPUs

At BGI, he says, they are currently able to sequence 6 trillion base pairs per day and have a stored database totaling 20 PB.

The data deluge problem stems from an imbalance between the DNA sequencing technology and computer technology. According to Dr. Wang, using second-generation sequencing machines, genomes can now be mapped 50,000 times faster than just a decade ago. The technology on track to increase approximately 10-fold every 18 months. That is 5 times the rate of Moore's Law, and therein lies the problem.

Obviously it would be impractical to upgrade one's computational infrastructure at that rate, so BGI has turned to NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate the analytics end of the workflow. The architecture of the GPU is particularly suitable for DNA data crunching, thanks to its many simple cores and its high memory bandwidth.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/enhCeIkl7RA/chinese-lab-speeds-through-genome-processing-with-gpus

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