A new version (2.7.1) of the BLAST+ executables is now available.
In this new version, blastdbcmd can look up taxonomic names (e.g., scientific or common name) faster. We have also made some low-level improvements that allow BLAST to multithread more efficiently, especially when available memory is not sufficient for the database.
The release notes are at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK131777/
The new executables are available on the NCBI FTP site at https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/executables/LATEST
Note: some LINUX and MacOSX users may find that they need to increase the number of open file descriptors allowed for a process. The number of allowed open file descriptors can be easily changed with "ulimit -n" (under bash). We suggest setting the limit to at least 1024.