Parallel BLAST on split databases.
CONCLUSIONS
BLAST programs often run on large SMP machines where multiple threads can work simultaneously and there is enough memory to cache the databases between program runs. A group of programs is described which allows comparable performance to be achieved with a Beowulf configuration in which no node has enough memory to cache a database but the cluster as an aggregate does. To achieve this result, databases are split into equal sized pieces and stored locally on each node. Each query is run on all nodes in parallel and the resultant BLAST output files from all nodes merged to yield the final output.


BACKGROUND
Source code is available from ftp://saf.bio.caltech.edu/
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D003205:Computing Methodologies; D003628:Database Management Systems; D030562:Databases, Protein; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods*; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software
D011506:Proteins