NVIDIA Parabricks v4.5: Accelerating Genomics Analysis
Released at NVIDIA GTC 2025, NVIDIA Parabricks v4.5 is a scalable genomics analysis software suite that solves omics challenges with accelerated computing and deep learning to unlock new scientific breakthroughs. This release includes support for the latest NVIDIA GPU architectures, improved alignment and variant calling, and reduced analysis time across multiple industry-leading tools.
What’s New
- NVIDIA Blueprints available through NVIDIA Brev, including genomics analysis using Parabricks and single-cell analysis leveraging RAPIDS and RAPIDS-singlecell.
- Parabricks support for NVIDIA Blackwell, including the new NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPU, bringing overall germline analysis down to 7 minutes, 56 seconds using four GPUs.
- The ability to easily combine Giraffe and DeepVariant, combining the power of pangenome analysis with the gold standard for variant calling.
- Collaboration with Roche Sequencing.
Improved Features
- STAR acceleration (2x acceleration over existing speed)
- Faster FQ2BAM (recovery mode improvements)
- Faster force-calling mode in Haplotypecaller/Mutectcaller
- Faster Giraffe (over 3.7x acceleration than baseline VG Giraffe)
- Minimap2 acceleration (including splice-alignment)
Easily Deploy and Run Genomics and Single-Cell Analysis with NVIDIA Blueprints
AI Blueprints provide reference workflows for agentic and generative AI, so enterprises can build, test, and deploy custom AI applications. Before deploying a large-scale enterprise blueprint, bioinformaticians now have access to lightweight blueprints through NVIDIA Brev, which makes it easy to evaluate accelerated genomics libraries enabled by NVIDIA technologies without infrastructure setup or arduous deployments.
Improve Performance with Parabricks on NVIDIA Blackwell
Advancing generative AI and accelerated computing, NVIDIA Blackwell is the latest GPU architecture that dramatically improves performance and efficiency at scale. With the latest v4.5 release, Parabricks is now available for use with Blackwell, enabling further acceleration and reduced runtimes, leveraging increased ALU units and tensor cores for better performance. On a single RTX PRO 6000, fastq2bam and Deepvariant workflows were 1.75x faster than NVIDIA H100 PCIe.
New Collaboration with Roche Sequencing
Genomic data generation is at an inflection point where new technologies, like sequencing by expansion (SBX), recently unveiled by Roche, enable sequencing at unparalleled rates, requiring faster, higher throughput analysis. Along with their proprietary accelerated algorithms, Roche has integrated NVIDIA hardware and software components directly into the SBX platform, including select Parabricks components and other accelerated libraries. Roche’s work on accelerated algorithms, in collaboration with NVIDIA, will provide an advanced data analysis architecture that plays a key role in realizing the full potential of the ultra-rapid data generation rates and fast sequencing run times enabled by SBX.
Latest Parabricks Benchmarks
In addition to new features and upgrades for each release, NVIDIA continuously works to improve benchmark performance across instruments, tools, and GPUs. Table 1 outlines the latest benchmarks on the most popular NVIDIA GPUs, including the newest Blackwell support in NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000.
Get Started
NVIDIA Parabricks v4.5 provides improved functionality and reduced analysis time across industry-leading tools and offers support for the latest NVIDIA Blackwell architecture. Parabricks v4.5 is also accompanied by AI blueprints for genomics and single-cell analysis that lets users easily deploy and test NVIDIA Parabricks and NVIDIA RAPIDS.
Acknowledgments
Contributions and thanks to the Parabricks and RAPIDS teams. Particularly for this release, we want to acknowledge and thank a cross-functional team to ensure these new launches:
For NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition benchmarks and Parabricks: Tong Zhu, Alejandro Chacon, Fabian Berressem, Daniel Puleri, and Yang Wang.
For AI blueprints with Brev.dev: Severin Dicks, Taurean Dyer, Gary Burnett, Alice Hsiung, and Andrew Walters.
FAQs
Q: What is NVIDIA Parabricks?
A: NVIDIA Parabricks is a scalable genomics analysis software suite that solves omics challenges with accelerated computing and deep learning to unlock new scientific breakthroughs.
Q: What are the new features in NVIDIA Parabricks v4.5?
A: The new features in NVIDIA Parabricks v4.5 include support for the latest NVIDIA GPU architectures, improved alignment and variant calling, and reduced analysis time across multiple industry-leading tools.
Q: How can I get started with NVIDIA Parabricks?
A: You can get started with NVIDIA Parabricks by downloading the software and following the documentation and tutorials provided. You can also reach out to the NVIDIA Parabricks community for support and resources.
