Substantial gains in performance can be achieved by configuring the tool according to the needs of a given application instead of simply running it with with default settings. Some points to consider:
Set the -e parameter (maximum expected value) as low as possible.
Set the -k parameter (number of target sequences to report alignments for) as low as possible. This will improve performance and reduce the use of temporary disk space and the size of the output files.
Consider using the --top parameter instead of -k. For example, setting --top 5 will report all alignments whose score is at most 5% lower than the top alignment score for a query.
Configure the tabular output format to only report the output fields that are actually required (see output options).
Use the BLAST tabular format for machine-based processing of the output. Use the XML and SAM format only if required by your downstream tools or if you prefer it as a human-readable format.
Use the option --compress 1 to automatically generate gzip-compressed output files.
Set the block size (-b) and index chunks (-c) parameters according to the available resources on your system.
Download and compile GCC:
cd
wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/gcc-4.8.5/gcc-4.8.5.tar.gz
tar xzf gcc-4.8.5.tar.gz
cd gcc-4.8.5
./contrib/download_prerequisites
cd ..
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
$PWD/../gcc-4.8.5/configure --prefix=$HOME/GCC-4.8.5 --disable-multilib --disable-bootstrap --enable-languages=c++
make -j 4
make installDownload and compile Diamond:
cd
git clone https://github.com/bbuchfink/diamond.git
cd diamond
mkdir bin
cd bin
export CC=$HOME/GCC-4.8.5/bin/gcc
export CXX=$HOME/GCC-4.8.5/bin/g++
cmake -DSTATIC_LIBGCC=ON -DSTATIC_LIBSTDC++=ON ..
make