Efficiency in the great big data cloud
Every minute, video material amounting to roughly 400 hours of viewing time is uploaded to YouTube. Users watch one billion hours’ worth of videos every single day, according to the channel’s own statistics. This data traffic between the YouTube “cloud” and the terminal devices, more than half of which are mobile devices, requires efficient organisation. The computer scientist Radu Prodan specialises in the efficiency aspects of these distributed and parallel systems. In the following interview, he discusses the possibilities and impossibilities that still lie ahead and that present enormous challenges for technology, humankind, and nature.
