| The State Of Grid Computing |
| Tuesday, 22 August 2006 by Michel Roth | |||
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"Grid technologies have long been used for scientific and technical work, where dispersed computers are linked to create virtual supercomputers that rapidly process vast amounts of information," Sara Murphy, program manager for grid computing at Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, said. "Now the commercial enterprise is moving to an IT model based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) where grids can be used as the technology infrastructure," Murphy said. "In some cases, IT is being recast as an internal utility for enterprise-wide use, and the deployment vehicle is grid." There are, in fact, three primary methods of grid computing. 1. Linking Data Centers This approach is used mainly by research institutions to share their facilities for high-end applications. For example, the National Science Foundation sponsors the TeraGrid, which uses high-speed networking to link 16 compute resources at universities and laboratories around the country. Through TeraGrid, users can access 102 Teraflops of processing power, more than 15 Petabytes of online and archival storage and more than 100 discipline-specific databases. 2. Capturing Unused Cycles on PCs PC CPUs typically run at less than 10 percent utilization. Link thousands of them together and you assemble a supercomputing juggernaut. The largest such project is SETI@home (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Hosted by the University of California at Berkeley, SETI@home harnesses the combined power of hundreds of thousands of PCs to analyze radio signals for evidence of extraterrestrial life. It runs around the clock at an average of around 180 Teraflops. 3. Renting Processing Power Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara, Calif., for example, offers the Sun Grid Compute Utility, which allows customers to rent additional processing power on a per-hour basis. CDO2 Ltd, a London-based firm that produces software that allows banks, hedge funds and investment firms to run complex financial risk simulations on their portfolios, was one of the early adopters. Read the article here.
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