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Matthew Dublin is a senior writer at Genome Technology. |
Chinese Team Accelerates Distance Matrix Algorithm with GPUs
August 03, 2012
Chinese researchers are taking advantage of GPU computing to develop treatments for conditions such as hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, and sickle-cell disease.
A group at China's Shanghai Jia Tong University have accelerated the DNADist application — a program used to compute distance matrix from nucleotide sequences — by a factor of 16 using GPUs.
DNADist enables researchers to extract information from data which could lead to a better understanding of the causes of, and treatments for, genetic diseases.
The speedups were achieved using the OpenACC programming standard for parallel computing, which uses "directives" or hints for the compiler to identify which portions of code can be accelerated.
The benefit to accelerating DNADist is that investigators can now study a large range of input data, which they can sift through to have more data earlier in the disease treatment development process.
Accelerating the DNADist application allows researchers to study a significantly larger range of input data and obtain actionable information earlier in the disease treatment research process.
If you would like to learn more, there will be a webinar on OpenACC and DNADist September 6th, which you can register for here.
