Convey Computer said this week that the Broad Institute has purchased one of its hybrid core computing systems, which will be used to speed up portions of its next-generation sequencing data analysis pipeline.
Specifically, the Broad will use an accelerated version of the Burrows-Wheeler aligner that is implemented on Convey's HC-2 system.
Convey developed and implemented a version of BWA on its platform two years ago that it claimed increased genome reference mapping rates by a factor of 15 compared to commodity servers (BI 10/14/2011).
"With the Convey system, we expect to increase performance of BWA tenfold," Tim Fennell, the informatics director for the Broad's Genomics Platform, said in statement.
Convey’s hybrid-core architecture pairs classic Intel x86 microprocessors with a coprocessor comprised of field-programmable gate arrays.
Customers of the company's platform include the UK's Genome Analysis Center (BI 2/1/2013) and the Jackson Laboratory (BI 4/27/2012). Convey also partners with CLC Bio to provide a combined software and hardware solution for NGS data analysis (BI 4/20/2012).