A new aspect of the Olympics: Big Data and cloud computing

The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, while not as magnificent as the Beijing Olympics, is impressive in its use of humanities and technology, where traditional culture and the latest technology converge through ideas, and even as you walk in the Olympic Stadium, your footsteps may bring flashing electricity. It is said that the streets between the London Olympic Stadium and the Stratford City Mall have paved 20 Pavigen tiles, the footsteps of a power generation system invented by the British genius inventor Pavigen, also known as "luminous floor tiles", when pedestrians trample floor tiles, 5% of the energy generated will be collected, Used to light LED lights located in the middle of the floor tiles, the remaining energy will be stored into the battery, the longest can be stored for three days. These stored electricity can be used for low-power applications through the urban power supply system. It is said that laboratory data show that "the energy of each stampede can cause the LED lights to blink 30 times." ”

The British government has invested billions of of billions of dollars to ensure the success of the London Olympics, The Daily Telegraph reported. The success of the Olympic Games depends largely on the normal operation of the technical infrastructure such as power, communication and data processing. Although, for security and reliability, Michele Hyron, chief integrator of the 2012 London Olympic project, said they had used some virtualization technologies in the IT infrastructure of the games, but cloud computing did not become a central part of the Olympic IT infrastructure as previously envisioned. Even so, cloud computing and the technology associated with large data processing will continue to play an important role in the processing of it data flows for 17 days, 34 venues, 302 gold medals, nearly 30,000 media people and hundreds of millions of viewers.

For example, the opening ceremony as the highlight of the event, its design and display, will inevitably use the powerful computing power of cloud computing. Crystal Digital Technology Co., Ltd. is the only mainland China to sponsor the Olympic Games enterprises, the official London Olympic Games Digital Image service provider. According to the London Olympic Committee, Crystal will provide a range of digital imagery services for the London Olympics, including all 36 venues in the London Olympics and 3D visualization services for many non-competitive venues, and the development of audio-visual materials that demand digital animation at various ceremonies, including the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In addition, digital animations will be produced for the various sports of the London Olympics and Paralympic Games to help explain the campaigns and enhance the demonstration of sports events. Among them, the Olympic Park, the competition venues digital simulation is used in the London Olympic Games official app application. And these digital image processing and rendering, is to apply high-performance cloud computing solutions. It is said that the crystal need a large number of calculations for image rendering, many of the applications such as Unicom's server in the evening, such a large number of computing applications of the resource reuse, is one of the essential applications of cloud computing.

In addition, the results of the London Olympic Games are said to be 30% more than the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, to meet the growing information needs of sports fans, so that they can understand the performance anytime, anywhere, must use the latest data processing technology, competition between the weather, people, traffic and other conditions of the pre-and control will also have to use large data processing technology. For example, during the London Olympics, police security threat management will consolidate and analyze different types of data from multiple sources, such as GPS signals and social networks. At the same time, the Olympic venues in the area of transportation will be part of the large data analysis to manage.

Big data of the Olympic Games, media companies are not lagging behind, Tencent Weibo released the "Olympic Index." During the Olympic Games (2012.7.27-2012.8.12), "Tencent Weibo Olympic Index" summary of the entire platform of Olympic-related micro-blog, through automated data mining technology, to three core data, scientific, accurate, dynamic, and "Update in seconds" real-time measurement of the Olympic Internet public opinion heat. The USA Today and the famous data company Infostrada also launched a new product, which predicts the top eight of all the 26 Olympic items in large numbers dynamically. According to this product named "Olympic medal Tracker", their results are all derived from the objective data, the Netherlands Infostrada, which is responsible for the real-time data of the Olympic Games for a long time, is based on the performance of the World Championships and World Cup competitions in the Olympic cycle. The first eight names of individual projects are forecasted and updated once a month. But the forecast also caused a lot of controversy, and badminton is the most controversial one, of which the singles laurel, the highest probability of prediction is Wang Culvert, and the men's singles defending champion Lindane only a bronze medal, the first runner-up by Lee and Taufik partition.

It is reported that during the 2012 Olympic Games in London, there will be 8.5 billion PCs, smartphones or tablets connected to the Internet, for example, the media reported that this year's Olympic mobile terminals to watch the game will be much more than the previous session, and in some competitions, the audience may also be through the mobile phone, The tablet computer and other tools to the user to carry out the game live. Internet traffic from Olympic venues will reach 60G per second, according to BT, although hosting WiFi and wireless networks are already fully deployed, and with many social media platforms, it may be inevitable. In the meantime, cloud storage and a variety of app apps will be a bright spot. You'll find a wide variety of apps for the Olympics, typical of games, live video, and a scoreboard for predicting and tracking medals, as well as Usain, a Jamaican dash star. Bolt to participate in the game, a variety of applications can satisfy everyone's interest. Behind these applications, there is a strong platform to support them, that is, cloud computing!

There are also some details, such as the London Olympics official website using open source technology and external CDN to help ease the pressure on the site. The 2012 London Olympic official website did not have a large server group, which used Akamai's CDN to distribute content globally. In addition, the site is widely used in open source technology, such as using lamp as its main software base to save costs and efficiently run the site. As a supporter of the official network infrastructure of the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. Cisco's network infrastructure will support BT's communications network, which is responsible for the video, audio and data traffic transmission of the London Olympics. At the same time, Cisco also borrowed from the Olympic Games to vigorously promote its internet of things technology. Cisco said that the network infrastructure provided to the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) would support small and medium-sized enterprises through local innovation centers after the games, and would then drive the development of Internet for all.

Even as the BMW sponsors, the marketing campaign during the Olympics is also full of technical color, according to the company's personnel revealed that in addition to conventional digital transmission, video, micro-blog, app and other means of combination, cloud storage, three-screen integration concepts will also be presented. In fact, before the opening of the London Olympics, TV sales wars have begun, with cloud TVs, which support the functions of cloud storage, search and multi-screen integration, app applications, have not only won sales but also expanded influence in the market. And we have reason to believe that, with the London Olympic Games and the success of the implementation, which contains the technology elements of cloud computing, will be in future competitions and day-to-day applications, have a more far-reaching and beneficial impact, the cloud is within reach, clouds of life in the side of you and me.