Performance Evaluation of an Fpga-Based Biochemical Simulator ReCSip

ReCSiP is an FPGA-based biochemical simulator to accelerate kinetic simulations of biochemical pathways. Biochemical models are described as a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Each equation in the model is called "rate law function", which represents the velocity of corresponding biochemical reaction mechanism. ReCSiP achieves high-throughput simulation with statically pipelined rate law function modules and numerical integration modules on an FPGA. This paper shows the basic structure of ReCSiP, and results of evaluation in 2 aspects: area and throughput. As the summary of evaluation, 1) about 64% of the total circuit area is occupied by floating-point arithmetic units, and 2) with an XC2VP70, ReCSiP at 90MHz can achieve 20times or more speedup compared to Intel\´s Pentium4 microprocessor at 3.2GHz