In recent years, due to advancement of internet technologies and instrumentation of every part of our life, we have noticed a huge surge in data available to us. This revolution is termed as Big Data. This Big Data cannot be processed or managed by any traditional methods of processing. This has led to development of several high performance and distributed computing platforms and programming frameworks. The design of such platforms relies on distributed computing concepts which are implemented in the form of systems such as Clusters and Clouds, and Big Data frameworks such as MapReduce and Stream Computing. These systems play an important role in todays' research, academia or industries by providing the processing of data generated from a variety of networked resources, e.g. large data stores and information repositories, expensive instruments, social media, sensors networks, and multimedia services for a wide range of applications.

The aim of this unit is to provide students with the foundation knowledge and understanding of Big Data and distributed computing systems and applications especially in context of Cloud. In other words, this unit will equip students with essential knowledge that is needed for building next-generation applications that are scalable and efficient and can process Big Data.

Key topics that will be covered: parallel systems: parallel paradigms, parallel and distributed algorithms, and building parallel applications using MPI; Cluster computing: cluster fundamentals and architecture; Big Data: MapReduce platforms, Stream Computing platforms and Algorithms. Cloud computing: Cloud technologies, virtualization, programming model, resource management and scheduling, application building for managing and analyzing data. The unit will also explain how the business models of enterprises are changing with these forms of computing that provide large storage and computation space without purchasing expensive computer systems.