Parallel fastDNAml Distribution Maximum Likelihood Analysis of Phylogenetic Data phylogeny , the evolutionary tree or lines of descent of living species. Maximum likelihood methods of statistical inference were first developed in the 1930's by R.A. Fisher. Maximum likelihood methods of phylogenetic inference are superior to some other methods, particularly when the data set includes highly divergent sequences, which are desirable but increase the computational difficulty enormously. Parallel computing methods now make the analysis of such large data sets practical.
More documentation is available.
We have modified and extended the serial version of fastDNAml to run in parallel on heterogenous and widely distributed systems. An MPI version of fastDNAml is now available for download , under the terms of the Gnu General Public License , see licensing information . Work has started on fastDNAml version 1.2.2, with both PVM and MPI support included. One of the five demonstrations which Indiana University researchers contributed to the SC98 High Performance Networking and Computing Conference was an extended numerically intense bioinformatic computation, carried out on 33 computers geographically dispersed across three continents, using the PVM version of this code. More information on that demonstration is available.