1. An Introduction to Big Data, High Performance Computing, High-Throughput Computing, and Hadoop

Recent advancements in the field of instrumentation, adoption of some of the latest Internet technologies and applications, and the declining cost of storing large volumes of data, have enabled researchers and organizations to gather increasingly large datasets. Such vast datasets are precious due to the potential of discovering new knowledge and developing insights from them, and they are also referred to as “Big Data”. While in a large number of domains, Big Data is a newly found treasure that brings in new challenges, there are various other domains that have been handling such treasures for many years now using state-of-the-art resources, techniques and technologies. The goal of this chapter is to provide an introduction to such resources, techniques, and technologies, namely, High Performance Computing (HPC), High-Throughput Computing (HTC), and Hadoop. First, each of these topics is defined and discussed individually. These topics are then discussed further in the light of enabling short time to discoveries and, hence, with respect to their importance in conquering Big Data.