NVIDIA Makes Available Free Toolkit to Aid COVID-19 Research – RTInsights

A genomic sequencing process that once took 30 hours or more can now be completed in a few minutes.

NVIDIA announced this week it will provide a free 90-day license to its Parabricks Genome Analysis Toolkit to enable researchers to leverage graphic processor units (GPUs) in their race to find a cure for the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The goal is to not just better understand how thecoronavirus is constructed to help develop a potential cure, but also discoverwhy it is more lethal to some individuals than others, says Kimberly Powell, vicepresident and general manager for healthcare at NVIDIA.

See also: 5 Places to Take Online AI Courses While You Ride Out COVID-19

The challenge is processing the massive amount of data requiredto sequence genome data. Many cloud service providers have been making computecapacity available to well over 50,000 researchers. NVIDIA is now moving tomake a potentially critical toolkit for analyzing that data available for freeas well.

Sequencing genome data clearly plays a key role in achievingthat latter goal sooner than later because GPUs can accelerate by as much as 50times the analysis of sequence data using algorithms that were createdspecifically to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to genome research, says Powell.A sequencing process that once took 30 hours or more can now be completed in afew minutes, says Powell.

However, the sequencing data now needed urgently as a matter of public safety resides in everything from documents to imaging applications. The Parabricks Genome Analysis Toolkit makes it easier, among other things, to aggregate and analyze all that data, says Powell.

There is no way you could make sense of all that datawithout AI, says Powell.

That research will also eventually play a critical role in helping to determine the original source of the virus. In fact, Powell says its already been established the COVID-19 virus was created outside of a lab and that it existed as far back as October/November of 2019.

COVID-19 researchers are naturally pursuing multiple linesof investigation. Rather than access to compute resources becoming an inhibitorin conducting that research, IT vendors are collectively moving to make sureresearchers have as much compute and storage resources available as required.

It will be interesting to see how much of the current spirit of cooperation will endure once the current crisis has passed. Its probable that not only will the COVID-19 coronavirus return; its also worth noting COVID-19 is only one in a series of coronavirus instances that are becoming more lethal with each new iteration. One of the potential benefits of all the resources being poured into COVID19 research is that pipelines, patterns, and processes are being created that could be applied to other research projects, notes Powell.

There is, of course, no guarantee a cure will be found. The common cold is a form of a coronavirus that has thwarted research efforts since the proverbial dawn of time. However, there may be a greater appreciation of AI may manifest itself should researcher find a cure. After all, its not likely any of that research could have been carried out in a timely manner with relying on AI to quite possibly save humanity than many are worried AI will replace.

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