News & Events

According to an article published on isgtw, the data deluge is coming. In fact, in many research disciplines it is already upon us. The era of ‘big data’ poses enormous challenges to researchers across almost all fields of endeavor, from natural scientists to humanities researchers and from citizens to policy makers. However, big data also presents a wealth of opportunities, especially in today’s global, interconnected world.

With scientific data output alone growing at a staggering 30% per year, it is vital that researchers come together to build the social and technical bridges required to enable open sharing of data. The organization charged with achieving this is the Research Data Alliance (RDA), which is supported by funding bodies from Australia, Europe, and the US. Having only recently celebrated its first anniversary, the RDA has already grown to include over 1,500 members. “The growth has been precipitous,” says Francine Berman, co-chair of the RDA Council. “Our community is expanding in both scope and numbers and our organization is evolving.”

According to an article published on Projects, we have now entered the age of big data, but at present we are struggling to cope with the amount we are producing. Laurence Field explains how the CRISP project is helping researchers to make sense of this information overload.

When people refer to big data or a data deluge in science, the terms are entirely appropriate. As scientific detectors and research instruments improve at a fantastic rate, we as a community are producing more and more of it. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, even before its current upgrade, was producing 200,000 DVDs’ worth of raw data a second, and the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project is expected to produce 400 gigabytes a second.

According to an article published on Science|Business, a new operational strategy mining big data to predict when online shoppers want their weekly food shop delivered will not only improve service for customers but boost retailers’ profits by four per cent.

According to an article published on Datanami, it’s difficult enough to keep track of the ebb and flow of new tools that span the big data ecosystem, let alone keeping tabs on the latest measures and standards by which to evaluate the influx. While there are standards for a number of specific application areas, architectures, and programmatic approaches, it’s difficult to get a more comprehensive view across solutions and system-wide needs.

This space was going to feature a "Top 10 Big Data Predictions for 2014" story. But considering the large number of such stories currently in circulation, a different tact was in order. Instead, according to an article published on Datanami, you'll find a selection of pertinent predictions from players in the "big data" software industry, followed by Datanami's opinion as to whether it will be spot on or whether the soothsaying will miss the mark.

Image courtesy of photoraidz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

According to an article published on isgtw, every year at SC (http://sc13.supercomputing.org/) HPCwire announces the winners of the HPCwire Readers' Choice and Editors' Choice Awards. Among this year’s winners were PRACE partner HLRS, Germany (http://www.hlrs.de) and PRACE member GENCI, France (http://www.genci.fr).

HLRS together with DataDirect Networks for large scale problem resolution in automotive and physics received the 2013 Readers' Choice Award for Best use of HPC application in manufacturing.

The 2013 Readers' Choice Award for Best Application of “Big Data” in HPC went to GENCI CURIE for its DEUS (Dark Energy Universe Simulation) project.

According to an article published on iSGTW, last week, the inaugural ISC Big Data conference was held in Heidelberg, Germany. The event was chaired by Sverre Jarp, chief technology officer of CERN openlab, and CERN was the focus of two case studies presented during the two-day conference. Frank Würthwein, from the University of California at San Diego, US, discussed how CERN handles big data today and looked forward to how the organization will have to adapt these processes to cope with increased peak data rates from the experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) after upgrade works are completed as part of the first long shutdown (LS1).

According to an article published on Science Wolrd Report, scientists trying to decypher the fundamental laws and building blocks that constitute our universe at CERN in Switzerland had to go big in terms of giant devices and hyper-charged technology required to achieve their ambitious goals. They succeeded. 50 years onwards, some of the largest and most sophisticated machines ever built by man yielded experimental prove to the complex theories devised by physicists, things like antimatter and most recently the Higgs-Boson, and accompanying scientific awards -- like Nobel Prizes.

iSGTW speaks to CERN openlab’s Sverre Jarp, ahead of this month’s inaugural ISC Big Data conference in Heidelberg, Germany. Jarp, who is the general chair of the event, picks his highlights from the conference program and tells us why big data presents exciting opportunities, but also poses challenges, for enterprise and HPC alike. 

Perhaps you could start by telling the iSGTW readers a little about the event in your own words…

According to an article published on iSGTW, this month sees the launch of an exciting new conference series from ISC Events. The inaugural ISC Big Data conference is set to take place on 25-26 September in Heidelberg, Germany.

The event has the tagline 'Where Enterprise and HPC meet' and will be chaired by Sverre Jarp, who is chief technology officer of CERN openlab, a unique public-private partnership involving a host of major ICT companies. Watch out for  in-depth interview with Jarp in the 18 September issue of iSGTW.

According to an article published on Primeur Weekly Magazine, Big Data is a rather broad and sometimes confusing area. However, there are some aspects of Big Data on which everyone seems to agree. First, the biggest Big Data can be found in science. Second, HPC and to a lesser extent Cloud computing provide the engines to access and process Big Data. And third, Big Data can provide a good ROI in industry for well chosen applications. Hence, a conference that combines these three aspects, provides a convenient way to absorb the latest developments in Big Data. This is exactly what the ISC Big Data Conference, September 25-26, 2013 in Heidelberg, Germany will do. Being chaired by Sverre Jarp from CERN - one of the largest scientific Big Data producers, and with Felix Wortmann, from Bosch Internet of Things Lab and Intel's Stephan Gillich & Girish Juneja providing keynotes, the conference will start with a solid scientific and industrial foundation. Being part of the ISC family of conferences - with the yearly ISC supercomputing event as its flagship - the new conference provides a deep link into the HPC community.

According to an article published on Datanami, in this age of big data, brilliant programmers who can write the best algorithms are worth their weight in gold. But there are other ways to exploit big data that don't require high-paid programmers at all. For the folks at the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, users who explore their own data using visualization tools and techniques can sometimes beat the best algorithms.

Science Grid this Week (SGTW) was founded way back in April 2005, at Fermilab, with the goal of working to inform the grid community and interested public about the people and projects involved in US grid computing and the science that relies on it. Just over a year and a half later, in November 2006, the publication went international, becoming iSGTW. The publication has also since broadened its coverage to include cloud computing, HPC, big data, and volunteer computing.