Grid Processing

c1ay writes "We've all heard the new buzzword, "grid computing" quite a bit in the news recently. Now the EE Times reports that a team of computer architects at the University of Texas here plans to develop prototypes of an adaptive, gridlike processor that exploits instruction-level parallelism. The prototypes will include four Trips(Tera-op Reliable Intelligently Adaptive Processing System) processors, each containing 16 execution units laid out in a 4 x 4 grid. By the end of the decade, when 32-nanometer process technology is available, the goal is to have tens of processing units on a single die, delivering more than 1 trillion operations per second. In an age where clusters are becoming more prevalent for parallel computing I've often wondered where the parallel processor was. How about you?"

Comments

Grid computing?

[dan dan the dna man]

I still think this is not what is commonly understood by the term "Grid Computing". Maybe it's the environment I work in but to me Grid Computing means something else

And is exemplified by projects like MyGrid.

Grid confusion

[Handyman]

It's funny how people always seem to find a way to confuse what is meant by a "grid". The posting talks about a "4x4 grid" without clarification of the term "grid", which is confusing because grid computing has nothing to do with processing units being lined up in a grid. The "grid" in "grid computing" comes from an analogy with the power grid, not from any form of "grid layout". The analogy is based on the fact that with grid computing, you simply plug your "computing power client appliance" (not necessarily a PC, could be the fridge) into the "computing power outlet" in the wall (a network port, usually), and you can "consume computing power", like you would do with electricity. Computational grids don't even necessarily have to support parallel programs; it is easy to imagine grids that have a maximum allocated unit of a single processor. What makes such grids grids is that you can allocate the power on demand, when you need it, instead of that you have to have your own "computing power generator" (read: megapower CPU) at home.