The age of organic supercomputing

“Big data” has well and truly entered into the lexicon of science. Large data sets are vital – defining even – for many disciplines in which it is often the honing of this raw data into information that is the very key to breakthroughs. A growing list of biological ‘omics (gen, proteo, kino, glyco etc), meteorology, particle physics, neuroscience…all more and more dependent on large data sets.

Commensurate with this increased data collection ability must come data analysis ability – this is why informatics and super-computing have come to the fore in the last decade.

However we approaching an impasse. Problems get more complex, computers are designed that perform faster – that has been the pattern of the last 50 years. But what when the ambition of science outstrips what can be achieved by ‘traditional’ computing? It is hard to put an accurate number on it – but estimates suggest that current size limits on data that can be processed in a reasonable timescale is in the exabyte range (a mind boggling quintillion bytes). Yet still scientists are facing limitations on the handling of some data sets.

The answer to this could be the much lauded area of quantum computing. Indeed NASA have recently pinned hopes on a computer from the Canadian company D-Wave which appears to make use of an effect called quantum tunnelling.

Note the appearance of the word ‘appears’ – which must have made the person signing the check very nervous indeed. It is amazing to think that the workings of a bit of kit costing $15M are still somewhat of a mystery – and moreover, inherently so thanks to a quirk of quantum mechanics where the mere observation of its effects will cause them to break down. And so whilst the company claim they have tamed some of the quantum weirdness which powers these computers, many experts are less than convinced.

As for the efficient handling of big data, could there be another way? Well for some forms of data sets, yes. Imagine the most complex data analyser known to man. A biological super-computer – but not just one of them, a whole population, potentially working on your problem. It is the age of ‘organic supercomputing’ if you will.

I am of course talking about the human brain – something that can be, and indeed has been, harnessed in the form of citizen science projects. In this month's issue we get to grips with how this collective analytical power can be harnessed in a useful way and ask why the public seem keen to donate their processing power. We also catch-up with Chris Lintott – founding member of high profile citizen science project Galaxy Zoo – in our Big Ask section.