Grid Computing ...
Well I was reading Jonathan's Schwartz's (the new CEO of Sun Microsystems) weblog yesterday and I think I just stumbled upon the next big thing in computing - Grid Computing. http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20060320
So what's this Grid computing all about ? In lay man's terms it means all your computing would be done NOT on your PC but on a central grid computer which for all practical purposes would be a massive supercomputer. Hence the terminology "The Network is the Computer". You don't have water purifying plants or electrical power generators at your house, it's all done at a central grid and then routed to your homes. So why can't the same thing done for computing ? You use the GRID for x hours every month and you get billed at the end of the month for the time you've used.
I see great prospect for this technology at the corporate level. Why would a organization invest in say 1000 PC's if you can just connect to a GRID and get the same computing power. You don't have to worry about maintanence, buying software , virus attacks, IT staff to support those 1000 PC's etc.. with this new GRID model.
I am not sure how things would work out at the personal home PC level. Will there be home PC's or would they connect to the GRID as well ? Only time will tell.
So what's this Grid computing all about ? In lay man's terms it means all your computing would be done NOT on your PC but on a central grid computer which for all practical purposes would be a massive supercomputer. Hence the terminology "The Network is the Computer". You don't have water purifying plants or electrical power generators at your house, it's all done at a central grid and then routed to your homes. So why can't the same thing done for computing ? You use the GRID for x hours every month and you get billed at the end of the month for the time you've used.
I see great prospect for this technology at the corporate level. Why would a organization invest in say 1000 PC's if you can just connect to a GRID and get the same computing power. You don't have to worry about maintanence, buying software , virus attacks, IT staff to support those 1000 PC's etc.. with this new GRID model.
I am not sure how things would work out at the personal home PC level. Will there be home PC's or would they connect to the GRID as well ? Only time will tell.
posted by pentium77 at 12:10 PM
2 Comments:
I have a strong feeling that Grid computing will hit it big time.
Logically, why the heck would you want to have the power generator at your office (or for that matter home), when you can get it on-demand and pay for use? It's just $1 per CPU-hr! (and my guess is as usage reaches a critical mass, this will further go down..)
The immediate concern that would come to mind in such a scenario is - security, especially in case of organizations, to whom there's the greatest deal value in terms of cost, flexibility... Well, security too is taken care of - for commercial utility, you have VPN access and your own storage resources.
The crucial question here will be the adoption that will be required to keep the CPUs flowing freely.
Good to know we agree on "Grid Computing". Even I feel that's going to be next big thing. It's time SUN gets aggressive about marketing this stuff. If this thing succeeds it could be the potential end of Microsoft, Dell, HP & Intel all put together. Interesting days ahead indeed !!!
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