VoltedFlow is a project to bring hardware-accelerated fast DNA and RNA pattern search locally to every genetic laboratory at an affordable price.

• Unité de recherche: INNOSUISSE
• Numéro de projet: 12595.1;10 PFLS-LS
• Titre du projet anglais: VoltedFlow is a project to bring hardware-accelerated fast DNA and RNA pattern search locally to every genetic laboratory at an affordable price.

Description succincte (Anglais)

VoltedFlow is a project to bring hardware-accelerated fast DNA and RNA pattern search locally to every genetic laboratory at an affordable price.

Résumé des résultats (Abstract) (Anglais)

DNA/RNA pattern searches are currently done on centralized supercomputers or expensive workstations running algorithms like Blast created for computers 20 years ago. This is slowing research down as users are waiting for results or don¿t even bother to submit them. This project will explore new ways to match genetic information against a huge-and-growing database creating algorithms which are based on the massive parallel computation capabilities of modern FPGAs. This will create a local and affordable desktop solution for industry and universities. While genetic sequencers have come down dramatically in cost and are now affordable even for small institutions, the speed of computers to assemble and analyse the data has not much changed during the same time. The first human genome project was completed in 2003 after 14 years and for about $3 billion, while today such a genetic mapping will be done (for example by Complete Genomics) in less than 12 days for about $10¿000. In the meantime, Intel Pentium 4 processors were already running at 3.2 GHz in 2003, and are not any faster today, merely running more cores in parallel. O¿Connor Informatics wants to use FPGA in combination with a desktop PC as a hardware-accelerated gene mapping solution to reduce the genetic sequencing time and to provide individual researchers, universities and hospitals with a powerful and affordable analysis tool.