PICO @ Cineca: a new platform for Data Analytics Applications

A new computing system, named PICO, is now available at Cineca. The new infrastructure aims at responding to the ever-growing demand of services and capacities (storage, management, compute, and visualization) which are essential to address the challenge of "big data" problems, nowadays a key factor of many scientific disciplines. The system is devoted to data intensive computing cases and features peculiar hardware characteristics (e.g. SSD storage), software tools, and the high-throughput techniques needed by data-oriented projects. Our objective is to provide users with the instruments required to address all the challenges that arise when either the volume of data, their internal structure, or the velocity at which they are collected make them difficult to be processed and managed.

Please you can find a document including the motivations which have led us install this new system and its technical characteristic.

We invite you to consult our Call for Interest to learn how to gain access to PICO and how to contribute in the definition of the projects which will be hosted on the machine.

You can also find a technical guide to PICO, to start familiarizing with the machine and its working environment. 

Finally, in conjunction with the new system entering the production phase, you are warmly invited to participate to a series of events meant to introduce PICO to the scientific community:

• Tools and techniques for massive data analysis, Cineca Bologna (PATC Course), Dec 15th-16th 2014
• Symposium on HPC and Data-Intensive Applications in Earth Sciences: Challenges and Opportunities, ICTP, Trieste (PATC Event), Nov 13th-14th 2014
• PICO: the CINECA solutions for Big Data Science, Cineca-Bologna, Dec 5th 2014