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Visions Of The Future Of Grid Computing
CaptianGrid writes "Computing grids, or software engines that pool together and manage resources from isolated systems to form a new type of low-cost supercomputer, have finally come of age. BetaNews sat down with some of the world's leading grid gurus to discuss the significance of such distributed technologies and separate grid hype from grid reality."
I guess its time that the power of a single CPU (Ghz and instruction per clock) are leveling off, and this seems like the only way to increase computing power, hook lots of it together. Hopefully we will be able to find some answers from the SETI or cure some nice cancer for the Folding projects. Would be nice if the commertial grids also help out those projects by giving them their spare cycles. GRIDS CRUSH SINGLE CPU.
The article mentions the commoditization of grid computing by adhering to a set of standards, but past a certain point, it makes little sense for IBM or Sun to make their tools interoperable... that makes their consulting value-add on top of grid resources they offer diminish.
I think that for full standards compliance, you'll need to look to companies which don't offer their own computing resources -- platform-agnostic companies. But then who do you buy the compute resources from? Unless you're buying your own systems for use (which makes "utility computing" less viable), it's a bit of a catch-22.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
There will never be a substitute for a single box with a lot of CPUs on it. For tightly coupled dataset the latency of a grid will be a limitation.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Look, the bottom line is there is nothing new here, just new sets of buzzwords. You have been able to submit massive computer jobs to IBM or Sun (with their insane $1/cpu-hour), or even most college campuses (the U of Minnesota had such systems) for the last 35 years. MPI/PVM standardized and commoditized the clustering side of things long ago.
;)
Globus is now "web services" and not "GRID". GRID is so last century. It's far more cool now that it's in Java too. Anyone still working on GRIDs should search/replace immediately!!!
And did they drop the name of every single business partner they have in that article, or did only I notice that?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
While RTFA, I couldn't help but wondering what the overhead of a Web service-based grid solution might be and how the overhead would get compounded by the frequent communication among the grid nodes.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Only problem with this kind of setup is in fact it's limited ability to accomplish anything usefull to a consumer or a medium company. While, of course it is an interesting field, and one that needs to be researched, technology like proximity computing (SUN) is what will dictate the technology in the future. It's hard as it is to even get decent multiprocessor scheduling without too much overhead on a single pc, overhead incurred with grids would be enormous (I guess that's why the primary applications would be file storage etc.) Proximity computing on the other hand, is an innovative approach that doesnt try to solve a problem in place, but avoids it all together.
What I want to know, is there anyway to sell my unused cycles on the open market. I love SETI and all, but making a $$$ would be super cool.
San Francisco Photographers
Is a combinataion of grid and virtualisation.
... same thing, ldap server same thing. If a server gets under load, it will automatically devote more memory/space/cpu/bandwidth to it as reasonable.
Grid in the sense that if my datacenter needs more resources, I just plug in a blamk PC with extra CPU/MEM/Disk and not worry about it. Or if one goes bad, I just rip it out without worring about what it will destroy.
Virtualisation in sanse that if I need an email server - I just create a virtual one on this grid and let it go, if I need a DNS server - I just create one on this grid and let it go, a web server
That is my idea of a true grid.
The guy in TFA talks about P2P being another type of grid and that a family could create a distibuted environment for shared data. He also talked about trust.
My idea is that with adding strong encryption you get basically small priate network that is almost impossible to crack. DVDs + CDs + Encrypted P2P among a small group of people == Old Skool Sneakernet (aka borrowing your friend's stuff). You and your friends can share all the entertainment among yourselves as you like. All you need is a P2P-type client and share your keys with your friends physically (as in 3 1/2 floppy exchanges).
You want to borrow that new Spider-man 2 DVD but are too lazy to get go over to your friend's place to get it? Send him an email and ask him to rip it to Divx and throw it up on your private encrypted P2P network.
Take a pinch of Standard Linux
Wrap it up in Xen
Add a touch of SELinux
And a little bitty bit of Globus
Oh like a Sandboxed Platform
Oh Lordy, Lordy, mixed with Free and Open Source Code
You know you lump it all together
And you got a recipe for a Multi Vendor Development scene
It is coming though, you know, you know.
What we have is a great big melting pot
Big enough enough enough to take every vendor and all IT's got
And keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out Application Service and Content Providers by the score.
With apologies to Blue Mink .
"Grid" is all about "You let me use your spare cycles, and I'll pretend I'm going to let you use my spare cycles in return."
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
Because I'm feeling contrarian today, I'll call you on your prediction. While virtualization technology might seem new and hip to some, in computer terms, it is an ancient technology, older, in fact, then the operating system itself. Early computers were developed using virtualization of hardware and IBM ran all of their systems on top of a firmware, which virtualized the environment that the operating system runs on. Higher up in the system, one of IBM's first modern operating systems was VM, which was a virtual machine operating system that could run itself in one of its virtual machines as well as other operating systems. It's true that virtual architecture provides an unparallel level of abstraction, but at the price of performance and administration.
The mainframe of old was in many ways a perfectly virtualized system. Units of computation, whether they be transaction, interactive or batch could be purchased in the exact quantity needed and the computational resources, with some constraints, could be located anywhere geographical and managed by anyone. This suited many of the computing needs of some very large enterprises, but even in its heyday it was not completely dominate. It was inflexible, because of the centralization necessary to administer it and the high level of abstraction. And it was expensive, due both to the complexity and the performance sucking power of virtualization technologies. In part, It was these twin factors that lead to the PC revolution. While enterprise computing will continue to evolve. It's techniques will never (again) become 'dominate' in the way it was in the in the late 60s through the early 80s, and virtualization will continue to be a tool, but will never be the standard way in wich most application are run or most people interact with computers.
What no one is mentioning is that these big cluster/grids that Sun/IBM are building to later sell over the network are dependant on the ratio between network speed and batch file sizes.
EXAMPLE: IBM is currently offering CPU/Hour service in Houston to oil and gas companies. Sounds great till you realize the multi-terabyte files that consume such a massive compute service are too big to be readily sent over the network. Instead they use vans to haul tape and disk over to IBM and then run the process on it.
What is the bandwith of a station wagon? Right now its faster than the internet on a 20 mile drive across Houston.
But even take it a step further and the ratio remains. What if I wanted to pay Sun/hr for CPUs while I worked on a big Maya render of 200 gigs. By the time I've sent that over cable modem have I gained a ton in performance time?
The problem I see is that we are making CPU massively parrallel but not networks. So will it EVER make sense to send a massive file to a commercial grid over a singular network connection.
Somone should do the math.