"...they are now building a much faster 16-node prototype network, in which each node will operate at 3 gigabytes per second. The network will have a capacity of 16 to 32 terabytes.

Using the new hardware, Liu is also building a database system designed for use in big-data analytics. The system will use the FPGA chips to perform computation on the data as it is accessed by the host computer, to speed up the process of analyzing the information...

“If we’re fast enough, if we add the right number of nodes to give us enough bandwidth, we can analyze high-volume scientific data at around 30 frames per second, allowing us to answer user queries at very low latencies, making the system seem real-time,” he says. “That would give us an interactive database.”"


http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2014/storage-system-for-big-data-dramatically-speeds-access-to-information-0131.html