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

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.

Inside the (infinite) loop

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

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