Big data researchers at Rice University will soon be able to compute in the cloud with fewer barriers. The university is installing the Big Research Data Cloud (BiRD Cloud), which will allow for cloud bursting. When an application exceeds local computing capacity, it will be allowed to "burst" with the user's permission so it can share the load with remote servers. BiRD Cloud "will be a great resource for fitting statistical and machine-learning models to big data with massive numbers of variables," says Rice professor Genevera Allen. In one project, Allen is developing statistical tools to make the best use of large volumes of cancer data collected by hospitals. Rather than a single node, BiRD Cloud will incorporate 88 Hewlett-Packard SL230 nodes, each a computer on a card with two Intel eight-core Ivy Bridge processors. The nodes will be interconnected through 10 GB Ethernet. With a total of 1,408 computational cores, the system's peak computing power will be 29.3 teraflops. To read further, please visit http://news.rice.edu/2014/11/21/rice-builds-on-ramp-to-cloud-computing/.