As big data returns to the fold, this means money in the bank for Cray Inc, the world's largest manufacturer of supercomputers. Back in the 1970s, supercomputers were at the verge of technological obscurity but now two decades later, it is returning to prominence.

The explosion of available data, from ubiquitous sources such as traffic and weather to other more financially related ones, together with the need to produce meaning from the mass jumbles of it creates demand for more computing power that ordinary machines could not provide.

According to Cray Inc Vice President, "The assumption was that supercomputers were cliche five years ago. People thought, 'I can run my simulation on my laptop'. That may have been true, so long as the data associated wasn't growing as well. But raw data is being created in exabytes as we sit here. More data means bigger computer, bigger computer means more data."

2.5 exabytes or 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are estimated by experts to be created each day. The world's ability to store data is doubling every 40 months, all of which play to the core strengths of Cray Inc.