XPS: FULL: DSD: Collaborative Research: Parallelizing and Accelerating Metagenomic Applications

元基因组学的重要性源于这样一个事实，即超过99%的尚未被发现的物种对栽培具有抗性。与单一的基因组测序不同，元基因组的组装是棘手的，在很大程度上是一个未解的谜。此外，高通量测序的出现正在推动巨大的元基因组数据集的快速生成。该物种的大多数还没有可用的测序基因组。有必要确定元基因组数据集中的物种数量以及每个物种的丰度。元名词分析算法中的关键步骤(组装和聚类)是计算密集型的，而算法处理的数据量是惊人的。解决计算挑战的最有前途的方法是构建专门用于合适算法的专用硬件。该项目的主要目标是开发一系列灵活的、负担得起的、并行的、快速硬件加速的生物信息学解决方案，使用GPGPU、FPGA和ASIC，用于元基因组分析，提供昂贵的计算机集群的替代方案。具体地说，将开发经济集群和组装的硬件解决方案。提出了几种加速方法，包括并行软件映射和特殊硬件设计，以探索应用程序的并行性，并提高运行生物信息学应用程序的硬件的数据访问带宽。这项工作中提出的想法将采用模拟、仿真和原型工作相结合的多管齐下的方式进行评估。此外，绩效指标将综合使用商业工具、协作人资源和现有的内部工具。这项研究将与行业合作伙伴合作进行。通过与几个行业合作伙伴的密切合作，许多想法能够直接转移到行业中。因此，这项研究的结果将对未来的生物信息学应用解决方案产生直接影响。这个项目将让研究生和本科生参与研究的各个方面。专业人员将积极将这一项目的研究成果纳入研究生和本科生课程，并开发新的生物信息学和计算机体系结构跨学科课程，以培训下一代劳动力。最后，这项研究中开发的工具和技术将通过网站提供，供其他研究人员、研究人员和行业从业者使用。

The importance of metagenomics arises from the fact that over 99% ofthe species yet to be discovered are resistant to cultivation. Unlikesingle genome sequencing, assembly of a metagenome is intractable andis in large part, an unsolved mystery. Moreover, the advent of highthroughput sequencing is fueling rapid generation of enormousmetagenomic datasets. There is no available sequenced genome for amajority of the species. There is a need to determine the number of species ina metagenomic dataset as well as the abundance of each of thesespecies. The key steps (Assembly and Clustering) in the metagenomicsanalysis algorithms are compute-intensive, while the sheer amount ofdata the algorithms operate on is staggering. The most promising wayto tackle the computational challenges is to build special purposehardware, dedicated solely to suitable algorithms.The main objective of this project is to develop a range of flexible,affordable, parallel, fast hardware-accelerated bioinformaticssolutions, using GPGPU, FPGA, and ASIC, for metagenomic analytics to provide an alternative toexpensive computer clusters. Specifically, hardware solutions formetagenomic clustering and assembly will be developed. Severalacceleration methodologies, including parallel software mapping andspecial hardware design, are proposed to explore the parallelisminside the applications and to improve the data access bandwidth inthe hardware running bioinformatics applications. The ideas proposedin this work will be evaluated in a multi-pronged manner using acombination of simulation, emulation and prototyping efforts. Further,the PIs will use a combination of commercial tools, collaboratorresources and existing internal tools. The research will be conducted in collaboration with industrial partners. Through closecollaboration with several industry partners, direct transfer of manyideas to industry is enabled. The outcome of this research will,therefore, have a direct impact on future bioinformatics applicationsolutions. This project will involve graduate and undergraduatestudents in all aspects of the research. The PIs will activelyintegrate the research results from this project into the graduate andundergraduate curricula, and develop new interdisciplinary courses onbioinformatics and computer architecture to train the next generationwork-force. Finally, the tools and techniques developed in thisresearch will be made available through web-sites for use by othereducators, researchers, and industry practitioners.