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Grid Computing Coming Of Age

Posted by timothy on from the upside-of-supersizing dept.

ravenousbugblatter writes "The New York Times online has an article discussing grid computing and recent advances made by Dr. Ian Foster, among others. The article compares the state of grid computing over the internet to where the internet was in 1994, which was soon after the development of the software for the use of URL's, HTML, and HTTP. Predictions are made in the article that in the near future the massive power of grid computing will be available to anyone with an internet connection, not just to big companies that can afford to hire HP and Sun to run a grid project for them."

7 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Grid2003 by grennis · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why settle for just reading articles when you can attend the Grid2003 workshop in Phoenix this November?

    Its the 4th one, and getting better every year.

  2. Registration Free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article from NYTimes requires (free) registration.

    Here is the registration free URL

    Please use news.google.com for finding article links.

  3. Distributed Google by quinkin · · Score: 3, Informative
    It appears that google is placing themselves firmly in the future of distributed computing (as previously mentioned onslashdot).

    Can anyone see another player apart from Microsoft having the market penetration required to make themselves the defacto distributed computing platform??

    Go Google I say - let microsoft get someone else to beta test their software.

    Q.

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    Insert Signature Here
  4. PS3 spreads grid to the masses by yelohbird · · Score: 3, Informative

    With the upcoming PS3 carrying out grid computing, there's no stopping for this technology reaching out to the masses, even those who don't know it!

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    h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org
  5. personally by asv108 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I prefer the term distributed computing, why did distributed computing turn in to grid computing?

    1. Re:personally by groover+mctasty · · Score: 5, Informative
      I have spent some time reading "The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure" by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, as well as the OGSA/OGSA standards being worked on by the Global Grid Frome . This is how I make the distinction.

      Distributed computing is a collection of ideas and practices of which Grid computing is a subset. Distributed computing involves any type of computational resource sharing over a range of couplings. Grid computing, basically, is the idea of taking the solutions distributed computing has come up with so far and making implementing them over widely distributed networks in a standard framework that will make sharing easy, flexible, and powerful. At the same time, faster computers, more available storage and higher bandwidth networks are pushing the development of new distributed technologies for applications suited to a standardized, available computational grid. These applications include physics simulations, tele-immersion (sort of a networked virtual reality), climate modeling, drug discovery, etc. Yeah these are all research applications. Just like the original Internet, the research community is a natural first audience. It will be interesting to see how companies and, eventually, consumers take advantage of the Grid in the future.

  6. considerations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    IBM, as well as other companies and organizations, is working on the Globus project and there are different scenarios out there. One of which is online gaming (butterfly.net). There are others, but right now, it's mainly scientific based. For the people who know, the Globus toolkit just reached version 3. This is important to know because this version is OGSA/OGSI (in draft) compliant which is an open standard describing the communication between the grid nodes (WSDL, WSDD, XML, etc). The grid is different from clusters and the grid is different from p2p computing. One view on the grid is use of remote resources. For instance, you can use en electron microscope remotely. Perhaps even with the DaVinci surgical machine, it would be possible to perform (minor) surgery remotely. The advantages of this are obvious. A specialist can help more people since it cuts on travel time. In my view, the grid cannot be applied to a certain solution meaning the grid isn't supposed to be for a certain problem, but rather, a new avenue to do things. With this in mind, the grid will grow according to how we think of using it. The Internet is an example of this type of growth. Furthermore, the grid is probably geared towards businesses and other backend operations. Later, perhaps, it'll become more of on online service directory in which you can find resources to do you work; printing facility, specialized resource use (super/quantum computers), and other things. Again, the grid will grow will become what we need it to be (even if we cannot predict it).

    All aside, it's exciting technology, not to mention that the Globus toolkit was named on the of the top 10 techs that will change the world.

    For those interested in security, the Globus toolkit involves an asynchronous certificate signing method initially and then move onto a synchronous method for better performance. The Globus books and papres call this a PKI scneario. (I'm not a security guy)

    Also Globus is not the only grid tech out there. Seti at home is one (and their derivatives). There are also distributed storage methods in which you can send data onto the grid and it'll be there (somewhere safely tucked away).

    fun stuff!