HPC from A-Z (part 11) - K

K is for knowledge mining

As the saying goes, knowledge is power – and who am I to argue?

The more knowledge we have on a subject, situation or person the more-informed the decision making process becomes. For example, if I was looking to purchase a rental property in New York it would be useful for me to know what areas were popular and what prices I could reasonably ask for. Similarly, by checking the dress-code on an invitation I can avoid a potentially embarrassing situation of turning up to a cocktail party in a Halloween costume.

For businesses, the stakes are somewhat raised. A business with knowledge of its customer base is in a much stronger position than one which has no idea who is buying its products or services. Having this type of knowledge provides a competitive advantage for companies looking to understand behaviours and trends, and for large companies it could be worth millions or even billions of dollars in profit or savings.

This isn’t limited to business either; educational institutions such as the University of Oklahoma are using compute-intensive tools that can turn raw data into superior knowledge, allowing them to make informed decisions about research priorities.

Similarly, if you think back to the post we did on the letter E, Renewable Energy Systems was able to find the optimum location to build wind farms based on their knowledge of regional wind patterns.

However, mining business data can be a time-consuming task – and this is where HPC comes in. In order to make the best business decisions possible, companies need to be able to mine and analyse data in real-time: at the speed of business itself.

HPC easily lends itself to the handling of vast volumes of data because it allows for rapid analysis in bulk. The large volumes of information required to provide this competitive edge can often swamp conventional data centers, but an HPC solution provides the support necessary to access, process and analyze numerous data types efficiently and quickly at large volume.

There are no prizes for coming second-place in business, so it makes sense to be in the know.