A Hardware Viewpoint on Biosequence Analysis

Abstract

Biosequence alignment recently received an increasing support from both commodity and dedicated hardware platforms. Processing capabilities are constantly rising, but still not satisfying the limitless requirements of this application. We give an insight on the contribution to this need that can possibly be expected from emerging technology devices and architectures, focusing as an example on nanofabrics based on silicon nanowires. By varying a few parameters we explore the solution space, and demonstrate with proper figures of merit how this family of beyond CMOS structures could be considered as the effective disruptive technology for biosequence analysis applications.