INDUSTRY

Massively Parallel Technologies, (Massively), a provider of on-demand high-performance computing, announced the release of its Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) plug-in module for The MathWorks’ MATLAB and Bioinformatics Toolbox products. Powered by Massively’s BioTech Virtual Power Center (VPC), the BLAST plug-in allows users of MATLAB and Bioinformatics Toolbox to experience supercomputing performance for BLAST jobs, delivered directly to their desktops. “Supporting users’ existing tools and workflows is a top priority for us,” states Massively’s CEO, Scott Smith. “Recognizing what a powerful combination The MathWorks products and our BioTech VPC could be, we think the BLAST plug-in will be of interest and benefit to both user communities.” Massively’s BLAST plug-in allows MATLAB and Bioinformatics Toolbox users to integrate the power of supercomputing into their current workflow without any additional hardware or software purchases. For existing scripts, users can simply replace BLAST calls with Massively’s single BLAST function. Jobs are transparently processed on Massively’s BioTech VPC, delivering full speedup benefits for BLAST jobs while freeing up users’ machines for other work. Users are able to combine the ease-of-use and power of MATLAB and Bioinformatics Toolbox with Massively’s high-performance BLAST searches. BLAST results can then be fed into other user scripts for post search analysis, supporting normal user work and process flows. Massively’s BLAST is a high-performance, parallel implementation of the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI) BLAST and applies the power of Massively’s BioTech VPC compute infrastructure to individual BLAST jobs for faster time to answers. The free BLAST plug-in installation package is available for immediate download at its Web site and supports Microsoft Windows operating environments.