ApHMM: Accelerating Profile Hidden Markov Models for Fast and Energy-Efficient Genome Analysis

Profile hidden Markov models (pHMMs) are widely employed in various bioinformatics applications to identify similarities between biological sequences, such as DNA or protein sequences. In pHMMs, sequences are represented as graph structures. These probabilities are subsequently used to compute the s...

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Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Firtina, Can, Pillai, Kamlesh, Kalsi, Gurpreet S, Bharathwaj Suresh, Cali, Damla Senol, Kim, Jeremie, Shahroodi, Taha, Cavlak, Meryem Banu, Lindegger, Joel, Alser, Mohammed, Juan Gómez Luna, Sreenivas Subramoney, Mutlu, Onur
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 21.10.2023
Subjects
Algorithms
Bioinformatics
Central processing units
Chips (memory devices)
Co-design
CPUs
Error correction
Gene sequencing
Graphics processing units
Hardware
Markov chains
Proteins
Similarity
Software
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Summary:Profile hidden Markov models (pHMMs) are widely employed in various bioinformatics applications to identify similarities between biological sequences, such as DNA or protein sequences. In pHMMs, sequences are represented as graph structures. These probabilities are subsequently used to compute the similarity score between a sequence and a pHMM graph. The Baum-Welch algorithm, a prevalent and highly accurate method, utilizes these probabilities to optimize and compute similarity scores. However, the Baum-Welch algorithm is computationally intensive, and existing solutions offer either software-only or hardware-only approaches with fixed pHMM designs. We identify an urgent need for a flexible, high-performance, and energy-efficient HW/SW co-design to address the major inefficiencies in the Baum-Welch algorithm for pHMMs. We introduce ApHMM, the first flexible acceleration framework designed to significantly reduce both computational and energy overheads associated with the Baum-Welch algorithm for pHMMs. ApHMM tackles the major inefficiencies in the Baum-Welch algorithm by 1) designing flexible hardware to accommodate various pHMM designs, 2) exploiting predictable data dependency patterns through on-chip memory with memoization techniques, 3) rapidly filtering out negligible computations using a hardware-based filter, and 4) minimizing redundant computations. ApHMM achieves substantial speedups of 15.55x - 260.03x, 1.83x - 5.34x, and 27.97x when compared to CPU, GPU, and FPGA implementations of the Baum-Welch algorithm, respectively. ApHMM outperforms state-of-the-art CPU implementations in three key bioinformatics applications: 1) error correction, 2) protein family search, and 3) multiple sequence alignment, by 1.29x - 59.94x, 1.03x - 1.75x, and 1.03x - 1.95x, respectively, while improving their energy efficiency by 64.24x - 115.46x, 1.75x, 1.96x.
ISSN:2331-8422