Chi8: a GPU program for detecting significant interacting SNPs with the Chi-square 8-df test

BACKGROUND: Determining interacting SNPs in genome-wide association studies is computationally expensive yet of considerable interest in genomics. FINDINGS: We present a program Chi8 that calculates the Chi-square 8 degree of freedom test between all pairs of SNPs in a brute force manner on a Graphics Processing Unit. We analyze each of the seven WTCCC genome-wide association studies that have about 5000 total case and controls and 400,000 SNPs in an average of 9.6 h on a single GPU. We also study the power, false positives, and area under curve of our program on simulated data and provide a comparison to the GBOOST program. Our program source code is freely available from http://www.cs.njit.edu/usman/Chi8. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13104-015-1392-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.