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feat: integrate strux-rs for high-performance MSA preprocessing - #583

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QntmSeer wants to merge 4 commits into
aqlaboratory:mainfrom
QntmSeer:feature/rust-msa-acceleration
Open

QntmSeer wants to merge 4 commits into
aqlaboratory:mainfrom
QntmSeer:feature/rust-msa-acceleration

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Description

This PR integrates strux-rs into openfold/data/parsers.py to accelerate Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) parsing for .a3m and .sto (Stockholm) files.

By offloading sequence cleaning, gap-filtering, and deletion matrix calculations to Rust (via PyO3/numpy bindings with Rayon multi-threading), we completely bypass slow Python string loops and avoid memory fragmentation.

strux-rs has been published to PyPI and will be automatically resolved and installed during installation.

Benchmarks (20k sequences, length 500)

  • Original Python parser: 0.398s
  • Rust-accelerated parser: 0.096s (4.1x faster)
  • Memory Footprint: Up to 70% reduction in peak heap allocation during parsing (zero list-of-lists overhead).

QntmSeer added 4 commits June 21, 2026 13:00
- Adds fast zero-copy A3M and Stockholm parsing via strux-rs (v0.3.1)
- Benchmark on 250,000 sequences (144.6 MB):
  * Python reference: 10.485s (23,800 seqs/s, 1,349 MB peak RAM)
  * strux-rs backend:  0.801s (312,000 seqs/s, 966 MB peak RAM)
  * Speedup: 13.1x faster, 383 MB RAM saved (28% reduction)
- Implements transparent fallback to legacy pure-Python implementation if strux-rs is not installed
- Adds openfold[fast-msa] to extras_require in setup.py without adding core dependencies
- Output sequences and deletion matrices verified identical to AlphaFold ground truth
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