Apple/Genentech BLAST Boosts Performance

chobee tells us that Apple and Genentech have released an implementation of BLAST, a popular bioinformatics tool, for G4s running Mac OS X. The blastn tool of Apple/Genentech BLAST, used for finding similarities between nucleotide sequences, has been optimized to deliver up to five times the performance of the standard implementation, using the power of the Velocity Engine on the G4. Source code and binaries are available.

Comments

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's a use for spare power that takes advantage of the Power Mac G4. I was beginning to think that SETI was a waste of time. ;-)

BTW, first post? :-D

Kinda old news

[Anonymous Coward]

This is kind of old news. This thread over at Ars was started about two weeks ago to discuss it - http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tp c&s=50009562&f=48409524&m=7570948763

Re:Kinda old news

[jaysones]

Yeah, I think /.'s trying to kick off apple.slashdot.org with more than one article by posting some slightly older stuff as filler.

This is Apple courting other markets

[D_Fresh]

While the armchair CEOs are screaming that Apple should port OS X to Intel/attack the enterprise server market/target business desktops, the company is actually doing that in a much slower, roundabout fashion. Instead of trying to bust into a market they have no foothold in, they are slowly but steadily courting the research market with apps like BLAST and ads trumpeting how fast OS X runs Mathematica.

This is smart business.

Even if Apple doesn't have grand designs to take over the enterprise server market, they're definitely going to gain mindshare in the grad student/corporate researcher community with tactics like this. And corporate research can mean big money, especially if a genetics lab decides to purchase a few hundred dual-GHz boxen and set them up as a Beow.... er, cluster.

If this happened, suddenly other institutions would sit up and perhaps take notice of a) the versatility of OS X, b) the ease of use of OS X, and c) the TCO advantage Macs have. I think this is very canny marketing by Apple, working on markets where they already had their foot in the door and trying to open that door a bit more. There's no way OS X Server (given appropriate hardware to run on) would displace Linux/Sun/MS in any Enterprise overnight - but with a few years of incubation and hardening in a research environment, it could have the technological and mindshare boost it needs to attempt a takeover.

Re:This is Apple courting other markets

[foobar104]

Even if Apple doesn't have grand designs to take over the enterprise server market, they're definitely going to gain mindshare in the grad student/corporate researcher community with tactics like this.

Hmm. I don't think it's about gaining mindshare. Apple already has mindshare in the sciences. There are more Macs at a nearby medical school and center for research in molecular biology* than there are anything else.

I think this is more about Apple continuing to focus on its core markets: consumers buying computers for the first time (the iMacs and iBooks), creative arts pros, scientists, and other similar segments (the Power Mac G4), and snobs with too much money (the TiBook).

Okay, that last one was a joke born out of jealousy for my friends TiBook.

Of course, taking a market where you already are doing well and just trouncing your competition is great for company, customer, and shareholder morale. So yeah, it's definitely good business.

I'm just glad Apple is continuing to spread the message that there's more to desktop computing than salespeople with PCs running Act, Word, and Excel.

* I have omitted the name of the school to preserve my last shreds of privacy.

Re:This is Apple courting other markets

[Anonymous Coward]

Rome wasn't built in a day and we all need to remember that when we consider Apple building marketshare and mindshare.

During the 80's Apple made it a point to be as anti-corporate as possible. Remember the "Lemmings" and "1984" commercials? At that point, they were so reliant on the Education market they could afford to thumb their noses at the corporate market. However the tables have now turned and Windows is moving into the education market at a fast pace. Apple needs to not only reclaim portions of the education merket, but get new users from the scientific and corporate communities to build their marketshare.

I am known for being an avid ABMer and after 3+ years of preaching to others about the superiority of the Mac, I have finally convinced 2 people in recent weeks to purchase Apple systems. :-) I guess all my MS bashing has begun paying off.

Re:This is Apple courting other markets

[D_Fresh]

Congrats to you for gaining two converts! That's not an easy thing to do. Why do I feel like a Jehovah's witness? "Well done, brother, another member of the sect has been added." Creepy, but exciting nonetheless.

Apple will be around for some time to come. I don't think anyone really understands the market niche they're occupying, but clearly they are somewhere, because they've been around this long and have $4 billion in the bank.

Re:This is Apple courting other markets

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

and snobs with too much money (the TiBook).

Okay, that last one was a joke born out of jealousy for my friends TiBook.

Thanks alot! I went into the deepest debt I have even been in to get TiBook, and now you insult me!?! *sniff* ;-)

Re:This is Apple courting other markets

[irony nazi]

Me too! I took out an Apple loan just to get one.

That 20 second rule is annoying.

Re:This is Apple courting other markets

[irony nazi]

This is my second "Me too!!" post for this story. Sorry, but... Me too!

I convinced a coworker to order one of the sexy new iMacs rather than an intel box. She's still waiting for it to be deliveried, but I feel that she made a wise decisions.

Damn

[morbid]

...and I was starting to do something similar with 3DNow!, eventually hoping to go cross-platform by having conditional compiles for SSE and Velocity Engine/AltiVec.

http://libsimd.sourceforge.net

Arse!

Inside the (infinite) loop

[adso]

It should be noted that Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson is on the Apple Board of Directors.

-adso

Re:Inside the (infinite) loop

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh, why?

Karma Spanking on apple.slashdot.org

[CyberHippy]

Allow me to be the first to spank my own Karma on apple.slashdot.org by stating that:

I submitted this to Slashdot on Feb.7! The day the Press Release came out! And I got nothing for it! Waaaaahhhhh!!!!!

See the release at Yahoo

Other searches

[Anonymous Coward]

When I saw this a few weeks ago I wondered what other types of searching could be improved using Altivec, I assume that if you can produce a "fingerprint" then you could convert it to a vector for comparisons. So I assume that chemical structure searching could be speeded up, how aboout searching spectral information, gene array data, proteomic data ....

Re:Other searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Structure based searching has been done by Daylight (www.daylight.com)

BLAST parallelized for OS X

[RemiT]

Turbogenomics has produced a commercial parallelized version of BLAST for OS X. http://www.turbogenomics.com/press/press07182001.h tml