Genomic data set sizes sometimes exceed what can be managed with standard in-memory data models, and then tools from high-performance computing come into play. An example is the use of rhdf5—an interface to the HDF5 large data management system (http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5)—by the h5vc package to slice large, genome-size data cubes into chunks that are amenable for rapid interactive computation and visualization. Both ggbio and Gviz issue range-restricted queries to file formats including BAM, BGZIP/Tabix and BigWig via Rsamtools and rtracklayer to quickly integrate data from multiple files over a specific genomic region.
