Big Data’s Big Show at SC’11

It’s less than a week away, everyone in the HPC community are drumming up for SC’11. As someone who has been to SC for the past seven years, I was pleased to see that Big Data appears to be the  new kid on the block this year. Roughly 20 sessions will be dedicated to Big Data related topics at this year’s Supercomputing show. From basic training on Hadoop and MapReduce to the challenges and opportunities for exascale data analytics, we will hear wide range of discussions on  Big Data.  Platform Computing will also be hosting a breakfast briefing (free!) on how to overcome your MapReduce barriers in the morning of Wed., Nov 16 at the show. Registration details can be found here.

Traditionally, hot topics in HPC are often around performance, scaling, latency and bandwidth. It’s only been in the last couple of years that data intensive computing has become an area of interest in HPC, and it is heating up quickly! The reality is, now that hardware is getting faster and cheaper - thanks mainly to the advancement in processor technologies -- users can run more problems faster. As a result, more data is being generated and a lot of that data contains tremendous insights we could utilize to make better products and decisions. Sure, Big Data exists in Web 2.0, retail, telco companies as well as many other verticals in the enterprise space, yet there is no shortage of use cases in HPC. Areas such as cybersecurity, fraud detection, next-gen sequencing analysis are just a few such examples that fall into HPC arena – often applications in these space are both computationally and data intensive. 

HPC has long been considered the incubator for many bleeding edge innovations that will later trickle down and benefit mainstream applications. We believe Big Data is no exception. The annual Supercomputing show is always about showcasing leading edge science and technologies, Big Data certainly fits the bill.  I am looking forward to learning about new solutions for Big Data problems developed in HPC, as well as getting a better understanding of the specific requirements for this particular market. It will be an exciting week ahead, and we expect to hear some big buzz around Big Data at SC’11!

 

Stop by and visit Platform Computing at SC11 in booth #1117!

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