Bigger is Better: TopCoder's Platform Upgrade Allows for Creation of More Valuable and Efficient Big Data Solutions

GLASTONBURY, Conn., July 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- TopCoder®, Inc., the world's largest open innovation platform and competitive community of digital creators, has upgraded its platform to more efficiently deliver valuable solutions to clients. Greatly expanded support for programming languages, improved scale and concurrency, and increased big data capability allow TopCoder's community of nearly a half million people worldwide to produce superior, more expressive code for real-world, big data problems.

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Through open innovation and crowdsourcing, TopCoder regularly hosts marathon match competitions that solve large, complex, algorithmic problems for clients. For example, Harvard Medical School ran a TopCoder competition focused on DNA sequencing alignment. The existing gold standard to calculate an accurate edit distance between a query DNA string and the original DNA string in 400 seconds took a full year to develop. TopCoder delivered solutions in two weeks and the winning algorithm runs in 12 seconds at an increased accuracy level. The delivery time alone was 96.2 percent faster than a traditional avenue could produce.

With marathon matches typically lasting two or three weeks each, the upgraded TopCoder platform now supports big data as input to the problem. This will help to produce even faster and more efficient solutions for clients with complex data analytics challenges.

Additionally, added support for cloud-based compilers and testers allows for near infinite scaling and for strategic partnerships, such as with IBM SmartCloud. New support for grouping of submission compilation and testing resources will allow TopCoder's infrastructure to run big data problems simultaneously on different architecture and target programming languages. The TopCoder community can now participate in numerous marathon matches at any given time using distinct architectures, as opposed to one at a time under the previous platform.

"TopCoder's enhanced, state-of-the-art platform enables us to run concurrent, big data challenges that are completely isolated from one another," explains TopCoder Chief Technology Officer Mike Lydon. "Combined with our larger capacity to service the new normal of big data, TopCoder's community members are more empowered than ever to create the best possible solutions for our clients."  

The TopCoder platform's language enhancements include updating Java version to Java 7, Python version to 2.6.6, GCC version to 4.4, .NET version to 4.5 and all submissions now being tested on 64-bit hardware under 64-bit operating systems.

Learn more about TopCoder's platform upgrade at www.topcoder.com/blog/10-enhancements-to-topcoder-platform-bigger-data-cloud-elasticity. 

About TopCoder, Inc.
TopCoder is the world's largest Open Innovation Community of digital creators with nearly a half million members representing algorithmists, software developers and creative artists from over 200 countries. The TopCoder Open Innovation Community creates digital assets including analytics, software and creative designs and solutions for a wide-ranging client base through a competitive, rigorous, standards based methodology. Combined with our extremely talented community this groundbreaking methodology results in superior outcomes for our clients. For more information about sponsoring TopCoder events and utilizing TopCoder's software services and platforms, visit www.topcoder.com.

Contact: Clinton Bonner
cbonner@topcoder.com 
860.608.9074

SOURCE TopCoder, Inc.