Compute and communication intense applications using PbH take full advantage of the compute resources available. As a result, users get the best price performance for the fastest time to answer at the lowest cost.
Powered by HOWARD Software Technologies and Middleware is developed by
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BLAST PbH combines NCBI BLAST version 2.2.13 with Massively Parallel Technologies patented HOWARD™ software technologies to deliver maximum speedup for BLAST jobs that currently take hours or longer to process. The search process for each individual query is parallelized to take advantage of multiple computers so that your answers are delivered in a fraction of the time compared to NCBI BLAST when processing large jobs.
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In its simplest form, "parallelized" means that a problem is distributed across multiple computers in order to return results faster. In it's best form, the full compute power of every machine is realized such that if 8 computers are used, results are returned 8x faster than a single computer; 128 computers, 128x faster. Unlike conventional parallelized high performance computing (HPC) applications, PbH applications harness the full power of all computers to deliver maximum performance without the cost and complexity of supercomputers and HPC clusters (i.e. collection of computers working together).
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A VPC is where users can run computation and communication intense PbH applications for the best price performance. All that is needed is Internet access and a web browser. VPCs include commercially off the shelf hardware, PbH middleware, and PbH software applications. Please contact sales@massivelyparallel.com if you are interested in acquiring a VPC for your organization or workgroup.
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BLAST Power Users have very large queries (in terms of number of sequences, size of sequences, and size of databases being searched) and want their answers returned significantly faster. Power Users may or may not have a computer or compute cluster available to run his or her queries. Typical Power User queries can take days or months to complete on traditional cluster systems. For example a user whose BLAST job took 355 hours to complete using standard NCBI tblastn on his system completed in only 3 hours using BLAST PbH tblastn. We look forward to your testimonial after using our system.
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Sign-up and login information is for Massively Parallel Technologies internal use only. Massively Parallel Technologies will not distribute or share your information with any third-parties.
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The BLAST PbH VPC is available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. When database updates occur, users will be notified via a status message on the MPTBiotech website (www.mptbiotech.com).
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Power Users are limited to a single active log-in and submittal of a single job at a time. Subscriptions for premium services that allow multiple jobs and larger jobs to be submitted are available by contacting support@mptbiotech.com.
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Jobs will be prioritized on a first come, first serve basis. Multiple jobs submitted will also be prioritized
on a first come, first serve basis.
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The default refresh rate is once per month: some databases may be refreshed sooner. To request a different
version of a database, please contact support@mptbiotech.com.
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Let us know! Send an e-mail to support@mptbiotech.com listing the name, version, and source of the database and we'll do our best to support your requests.
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If you have a proprietary database that you want to search using BLAST PbH, contact us at support@mptbiotech.com so we can discuss options to best support your need.
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Currently no more than 100 sequences per job can be submitted through the website. Please contact support@mptbiotech.com
to arrange processing of larger jobs.
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There are occasions when the number and size of submitted jobs maximize the use of computer resources. In other words, all of our nodes are working at optimal performance and 100% capacity.
A message will displayed indicating your job is in the queue. Once computing resources are available, your job will be run.
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In most cases, if a problem is encountered processing your job, and error message will be displayed.
The message will indicate whether or not you need to resubmit your job.
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Occasionally a problem may be encountered when processing your job and you will need to resubmit it. If the VPC is offline for maintenance a message will be posted on website.
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Results are stored as files in the user's Results directory. This can be accessed from the user's homepage
(after login). The files may be opened directly or downloaded to the user's computer from there.
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Results are automatically saved in the user's Results directory as mentioned above. Currently the limit on storage space
for a user is set to a default of 1GB. If this limit is exceeded, the user will be notified by email and a short
period of time will be allowed for the user to rectify the situation. After this grace period, MPT may be forced to
remove some data, starting with the oldest results first.
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Currently there is no time limit for how long results will be saved as long as you remain
under your default 1 GB storage limit. Once your limit is exceeded, you will be notified
by email and given a short period of time to offload and/or delete results no longer needed.
After this grace period, results wil be removed - starting with the oldest results first - until
you are under your 1GB storage limit.
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BLAST PbH accelerates BLAST searches but leaves specific search settings and criteria up to the user.
Default settings are based on NCBI BLAST. The NCBI website (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST/) provides a variety of
resources to familiarize users to BLAST. In addition, the book "BLAST", by Ian Korf, Mark Yandell, and Joseph Bedell, is a great reference resource.
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Support@mptbiotech.com can help with the following types of questions and issues:
Input query requirements and max size
Output options
Database support and versions
Failed searches
Questions on output results
If you have questions regarding setting-up your searches or specifics of output results, please reference the NCBI website or reference books such as "BLAST", by Ian Korf, Mark Yandell, and Joseph Bedell.