Colloquium Details
Moonshadow Mobile: High Speed Visualization of Big Data
| Author: | Eimar Boesjes Moonshadow Mobile |
|---|---|
| Date: | May 31, 2012 |
| Time: | 15:30 |
| Location: | 220 Deschutes |
Abstract
Eugene based Moonshadow Mobile has developed software to visualize Big Data on maps at unparalleled speeds. The software does not require any specialized hardware and runs on standard servers in the cloud. Moonshadow has measured data access speeds of up to 13.6 ns/record which equates to accessing 73 million individual records per second, per processor core. This high speed data access allows for a new breed of user interfaces for working with Big Data. Instead of having users interact with Big Data by entering SQL queries and returning tables, Moonshadow visualizes big databases on maps instantly. Rather than composing and executing SQL queries users simply select filters. The selected data is instantly shown on the map. Queries with joins are created without the need to know any SQL by merging and subtracting universes, with results shown instantly.
Government organizations and businesses have started to adapt the technology. It is used by data vendor Labels & Lists for its VoterMapping shopping cart environment built inside of Bing Maps. VoterMapping contains more than 120 million voter records with 400-1,000 fields each and will cover all 160 million voters in the US within the next three months. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania recently licensed the technology to provide all of its state senators, state representatives and their staff (more than 1,000 users in total) with access to data about their respective constituents inside of Bing Maps. NCC Media, a consortium of cable companies that includes Comcast, Viamedia and Time/Warner Cable, uses Moonshadow's technology to give advertisers access to data about all cable TV advertising zones nationwide. This solution includes the voter databases for each state. Political campaigns use this system to make demographic selections and instantly see how many of the selected voters are located in each cable zone. During the colloquium Moonshadow will show images that visualize more than 500 million Census records in Bing Maps.
Moonshadow's technology uses a custom built, specialized in-memory database that is optimized for speed and memory footprint. We describe what kind of data this database operates best on, how the data is arranged in a two-level, in-memory structure ('clumping' and 'in-line trees'), and how a custom built interpreter is used to provide fast access to the data. Moonshadow's technology uses roughly 10% of the memory footprint of traditional relational databases to store the same data. The visualization speed is roughly 100 times faster than traditional technologies.
Moonshadow Mobile introduced its first Big Data visualization solutions in 2010 and is growing quickly. The company would like to stay in Eugene but it's biggest constraint for growth right now is finding quality software engineers.
Biography
Eimar Boesjes, CTO of Moonshadow Mobile, is a serial Internet entrepreneur and visionary who holds ten patents on Internet related technologies. Moonshadow Mobile has develop breakthrough technology to manage massive amounts of voter data visually right inside of Bing Maps. The technology is used in Labels & Lists VoterMapping software as well as in Ground Game, a mobile canvassing solution that works on the iPhone, iPad and on Androids.