Hi all,
I've been thinking recently about softwares for NGS... On the samtools mailing list I've discussed about some variables that were implemented as "long double" as the developer needed more precision than "double" numbers.
NGS systems output gigabytes of data, millions of sequences to be analyzed. Before this, software using "float" or "double" variables might be enough precise when hundreds or thousands of sequences had to be handled.
I'm afraid that we are possibly using software that, in a certain way, doesn't support huge amounts of data.
Arbitrary precision libraries are available (i.e. GMP or MPFR) but, AFAIK, they are not used in bioinformatics tools...
What do you think about this?
d
I've been thinking recently about softwares for NGS... On the samtools mailing list I've discussed about some variables that were implemented as "long double" as the developer needed more precision than "double" numbers.
NGS systems output gigabytes of data, millions of sequences to be analyzed. Before this, software using "float" or "double" variables might be enough precise when hundreds or thousands of sequences had to be handled.
I'm afraid that we are possibly using software that, in a certain way, doesn't support huge amounts of data.
Arbitrary precision libraries are available (i.e. GMP or MPFR) but, AFAIK, they are not used in bioinformatics tools...
What do you think about this?
d
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