Data-Intensive Computing Initiative (DICI)
Data-intensive computing is managing, analyzing, and understanding data at volumes and rates that push the frontiers of current technologies.
Data-intensive computing is concerned with capturing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing multi-terabyte and petabyte data volumes. Such data stores exist in a diverse range of application domains, including scientific research (e.g., bioinformatics and astronomy), commerce (e.g., monitoring electrical power grids or ports-of-entry), and cyber security.
Revolutionary advances in software, hardware, and algorithm development are needed to address the analytical requirements of increasing data volume and complexity. Solution technologies in data-intensive computing must also scale to handle the ballooning data volumes and simultaneously accelerate timely, effective analysis results.
Through its Data-Intensive Computing Initiative (DICI), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is researching and developing scalable solutions for data-intensive problems that are characterized by
- streaming data ranging from gigabits to terabits per second
- heterogeneous data (2 to 8 formats)
- distributed resources (for data, computing, and analysis)
- massive data volumes (multi-terabytes to -petabytes)
- complex analysis issues, including
- heterogeneous data
- real-time analysis
- adaptive control
- dynamic feedback.
This initiative will address all of these characteristics through its end-to-end (from data collection through analysis) demonstrations of data-intensive computing solutions -- technologies that will vastly accelerate analytical results for critical decisions and discoveries.

