I'm interested in learning how to utilize NumPy arrays to optimize geoprocessing. Much of my work involves "big data", where geoprocessing often takes days to accomplish certain tasks. Needless to say, I am very interested in optimizing these routines. ArcGIS 10.1 has a number of NumPy functions that can be accessed via arcpy, including:

1. NumPyArrayToFeatureClass (arcpy.da)
2. RasterToNumPyArray (arcpy)
3. TableToNumPyArray (arcpy.da)

For example purposes, let's say I want to optimize the following processing intensive workflow utilizing NumPy arrays:

The general idea here is that there are a huge number of vector-based points that move through both vector and raster-based operations resulting in a binary integer raster dataset.

How could I incorporate NumPy arrays to optimize this type of workflow?