The best configuration for HUMAnN: CPU, GPU, RAM?

Microbial community profiling HUMAnN
1

To buy a PC for working with HUMAnN 3, what configuration do you recommend:

  1. CPU?
  2. GPU?
  3. RAM?
    Which one is the bottleneck?
2

It depends on the total number of reads of the samples you are going to process and how many of those reads pass through to translated search. Usually memory is the bottleneck especially as the size of the input file grows. Ideally you would have 8 cores and around 32 Gb of memory for the average input file.

There are cloud-based options you might consider like Terra [https://terra.bio/] with Google Cloud offering free credits to get started: https://support.terra.bio/hc/en-us/articles/6650387272091-Google-Cloud-free-credits-in-Terra-FAQs . If you only have a few samples to run you might consider computing with a cloud provider. However, if you have a lot of samples and/or plan to run many batches it would make sense to get a PC instead.

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