Era of the Tera

I read in the New York Times yesterday that Intel has produced a chip with 80 core processors giving it a total computing power of 1.3 teraflops. So the natural question is what could you use 80 CPUs for? The article referred to a 2005 Intel Paper titled Recognition, Mining and Synthesis Moves Computers to the Era of Tera by Pradeep Dubey. This article opened with the following quote: “The great strength of computers is that they can reliably manipulate vast amounts of data very quickly. Their great weakness is that they don’t have a clue as to what any of that data actually means.” Stephen Cass, “A Fountain of Knowledge,” IEEE Spectrum, January 2004. When I saw this quote, I realized even the hardware engineers agree semantics is now the critical factor limiting our ability to effectively use computers I realized that we must continue our mission to promote semantic mapping concepts. So let me summarize my feelings after reading this article:

If want to be able to leverage the power coming in the Era of the Tera, you must start with semantics – recoding the meaning of your data.

And if you don’t yet have a metadata registry…get one!

Right next to the CEO, CIO, and CFO in the board room should be your CDO (Chief Data Officer).