Big data has become a big talking point these days, but there are many different interpretations, contrasting views and conflicting arguments surrounding it. Dan Ariely of Duke University provides what is in my opinion, a great analogy:
"Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it."
At Boston we have been providing HPC (High Performance Computing) solutions for more than 20 years. HPC has always involved big data for things like large-scale analysis and huge storage requirements. Boston has provided systems to a range of users from various scientific backgrounds, all of whom needed to generate, store and analyse immense volumes of data. One such customer was CERN, which was generating 15 petabytes of data on a daily basis (roughly 250 million MP3 songs). Producing data at this scale can create numerous technological challenges and requires some highly innovative HPC solutions that push the boundaries of science and technology.
Read the full article by Boston's head of HPC David Power here.