GenPairX: A Hardware-Algorithm Co-Designed Accelerator for Paired-End Read Mapping

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Main Authors: Eudine, Julien, Li, Chu, Cheng, Zhuo, Andri, Renzo, Firtina, Can, Sadrosadati, Mohammad, Ghiasi, Nika Mansouri, Koliogeorgi, Konstantina, Nag, Anirban, Tavakkol, Arash, Mao, Haiyu, Mutlu, Onur, Bergman, Shai, Zhang, Ji
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Eudine, Julien
Li, Chu
Cheng, Zhuo
Andri, Renzo
Firtina, Can
Sadrosadati, Mohammad
Ghiasi, Nika Mansouri
Koliogeorgi, Konstantina
Nag, Anirban
Tavakkol, Arash
Mao, Haiyu
Mutlu, Onur
Bergman, Shai
Zhang, Ji
author_facet Eudine, Julien
Li, Chu
Cheng, Zhuo
Andri, Renzo
Firtina, Can
Sadrosadati, Mohammad
Ghiasi, Nika Mansouri
Koliogeorgi, Konstantina
Nag, Anirban
Tavakkol, Arash
Mao, Haiyu
Mutlu, Onur
Bergman, Shai
Zhang, Ji
contents Genome sequencing has become a central focus in computational biology. A genome study typically begins with sequencing, which produces millions to billions of short DNA fragments known as reads. Read mapping aligns these reads to a reference genome. Read mapping for short reads comes in two forms: single-end and paired-end, with the latter being more prevalent due to its higher accuracy and support for advanced analysis. Read mapping remains a major performance bottleneck in genome analysis due to expensive dynamic programming. Prior efforts have attempted to mitigate this cost by employing filters to identify and potentially discard computationally expensive matches and leveraging hardware accelerators to speed up the computations. While partially effective, these approaches have limitations. In particular, existing filters are often ineffective for paired-end reads, as they evaluate each read independently and exhibit relatively low filtering ratios. In this work, we propose GenPairX, a hardware-algorithm co-designed accelerator that efficiently minimizes the computational load of paired-end read mapping while enhancing the throughput of memory-intensive operations. GenPairX introduces: (1) a novel filtering algorithm that jointly considers both reads in a pair to improve filtering effectiveness, and a lightweight alignment algorithm to replace most of the computationally expensive dynamic programming operations, and (2) two specialized hardware mechanisms to support the proposed algorithms. Our evaluations show that GenPairX delivers substantial performance improvements over state-of-the-art solutions, achieving 1575x and 1.43x higher throughput per watt compared to leading CPU-based and accelerator-based read mappers, respectively, all without compromising accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_19384
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GenPairX: A Hardware-Algorithm Co-Designed Accelerator for Paired-End Read Mapping
Eudine, Julien
Li, Chu
Cheng, Zhuo
Andri, Renzo
Firtina, Can
Sadrosadati, Mohammad
Ghiasi, Nika Mansouri
Koliogeorgi, Konstantina
Nag, Anirban
Tavakkol, Arash
Mao, Haiyu
Mutlu, Onur
Bergman, Shai
Zhang, Ji
Hardware Architecture
Genomics
Genome sequencing has become a central focus in computational biology. A genome study typically begins with sequencing, which produces millions to billions of short DNA fragments known as reads. Read mapping aligns these reads to a reference genome. Read mapping for short reads comes in two forms: single-end and paired-end, with the latter being more prevalent due to its higher accuracy and support for advanced analysis. Read mapping remains a major performance bottleneck in genome analysis due to expensive dynamic programming. Prior efforts have attempted to mitigate this cost by employing filters to identify and potentially discard computationally expensive matches and leveraging hardware accelerators to speed up the computations. While partially effective, these approaches have limitations. In particular, existing filters are often ineffective for paired-end reads, as they evaluate each read independently and exhibit relatively low filtering ratios. In this work, we propose GenPairX, a hardware-algorithm co-designed accelerator that efficiently minimizes the computational load of paired-end read mapping while enhancing the throughput of memory-intensive operations. GenPairX introduces: (1) a novel filtering algorithm that jointly considers both reads in a pair to improve filtering effectiveness, and a lightweight alignment algorithm to replace most of the computationally expensive dynamic programming operations, and (2) two specialized hardware mechanisms to support the proposed algorithms. Our evaluations show that GenPairX delivers substantial performance improvements over state-of-the-art solutions, achieving 1575x and 1.43x higher throughput per watt compared to leading CPU-based and accelerator-based read mappers, respectively, all without compromising accuracy.
title GenPairX: A Hardware-Algorithm Co-Designed Accelerator for Paired-End Read Mapping
topic Hardware Architecture
Genomics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19384