Lenovo announced updates on the 4th generation of its Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool (GOAST v4.0). First introduced in 2020, GOAST has been advancing genome sequencing across industries including pharma, healthcare, agriculture, and drug discovery.
The latest version reduces genome processing to as little as 24 minutes per whole genome sequence. A single node is capable of processing approximately 22,000 genomes annually, nearly triple the throughput of earlier releases. With each human genome comprising around 3 billion DNA base pairs, GOAST v4.0 is decoding trillions of cells to support breakthroughs in science and medicine.
By cutting genome analysis from days to minutes, GOAST v4.0 enables researchers, clinicians, and pharma companies to accelerate precision medicine, cancer research, drug discovery, and national health programmes. The tool delivers GPU-level performance on optimised CPUs at up to 50 per cent lower cost. GOAST is accessible through Lenovo’s pay-as-you-go High-Performance Computing (HPC)-as-a-Service model, TruScale.
“GOAST v4.0 breaks bioinformatics bottlenecks by combining Lenovo’s HPC expertise with genomics innovation,” said Sumir Bhatia, President, Lenovo ISG Asia Pacific. “With this leap in performance and efficiency, we are enabling real-time discoveries that can save lives and advance global health equity.”
Key advancements with GOAST v4.0 include:
- Genome processing reduced from 68–150 hours to 24 minutes, a 375x improvement.
- Up to ~22,000 genomes processed per node annually, supporting population-scale genomics.
- GPU-level performance at lower cost.
- Pay-as-you-go Lenovo TruScale HPC-as-a-Service for laboratories and public health agencies.
- Water-cooled HPC systems reducing power consumption by up to 40 per cent.
GOAST is being used at institutions including the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) and the University of Delhi in India, BRIN in Indonesia, Novo Genomics in Saudi Arabia, and the Biobank of Thailand. A leading children’s hospital in Australia is deploying GOAST to scale genomics research, while pharma companies in the Philippines are investing in high-performance computing. In India, multiple pharma companies are using GOAST to optimise cancer research, accelerate drug discovery, and improve treatments.
GOAST also demonstrates how AI and HPC together are enabling innovations, from algorithm design to precise bioinformatics workflows, reinforcing its role as a platform for precision health.
Lenovo stated that its advantage lies in bringing together healthcare experts, scientists, and medical researchers with HPC hardware and software engineers, creating platforms such as GOAST that deliver both speed and scientific depth.
As part of Lenovo’s Smarter AI for All vision, GOAST v4.0 combines HPC and AI to accelerate genomics research, aiming to make genome sequencing faster, more cost-effective, and globally accessible.