Grid Computing

Even Bacteria are Networked

Frank — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:42:00 GMT

Recent research into the growth and behavior of bacteria has given scientists reason to think that germs communicate with each other.

If the algorithms and pattern bacteria employ could be ported over to neural networks, grid computing computing, autonomous bots and intelligent agents, we could see a whole new field of bio-mimicry develop.

Technorati tags: Neural Networks, Biomimicry, agents, bots, grid computing, networking, Bacteria

Microsoft Enters the SuperComputing Market

Frank — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 06:50:00 GMT

Microsoft is getting into the SuperComputing market and is expected to make the official announcement today at the SC05 SuperComputing Conference today.

The flagship product for this market space will be Windows Server 2003 Cluster Edition, which the general public will get to see for the first time at the show.

Unlike the traditional home and business desktop market, Microsoft is a small player in the SuperComputing realm, where Linux and Unix variants reign supreme.

Now that these super high computers cost $4000 to $10,000 (down from millions of dollars) it makes good business sense for Microsoft to start exploring this market.

The only catch is that many in this industry love their custom rigged solutions and Microsoft will most certainly face some entry hurdles and push back from this community.

Of course, if Microsoft can deliver a good product at a better price, then they'll be able to overcome the entry hurdles and come to be a serious player in this space as well.

Only time will tell.

Intel Releases Pentium D Today

Frank — Fri, 27 May 2005 07:31:00 GMT

Today, Intel releases the Pentium-D chip, the second set of dual core microprocessors that's priced for the masses.

What's the big deal about Dual Core technology? PC World puts it best:

Last year was a turning point in Intel's recent history. The company made two crucial decisions about its product design strategies, opting to accelerate the development of dual-core processors and focus on integrating technology that boosts overall system performance without relying on increases to clock speed or cache size.

A four-year ride up the clock speed ladder allowed Intel to reach new performance heights; but as the Pentium 4 surged past 3 GHz, reaching the next speed grade became harder and harder due to overheating. Likewise, there's only so much cache memory a chip maker can add before the processor becomes too large to be manufactured efficiently. Building two processor cores onto a single chip will allow Intel to increase performance without having to worry about melting the inside of a PC chassis.

Dual core results in faster computers and it's not that far fetched to imagine triple or quadruple core processors one day. Maybe, one day, a grid computing computer will exist on a single chip.

I know there are practical engineering challenges to that, but I'm just thinking way ahead into the future. *grin*

Personal Grid Computing

Frank — Wed, 04 May 2005 10:34:00 GMT

It would seem that grid computing Computing has now reached the desktop.

Orion Multisystems just shipped a 96 node multi-processor machine that can sit on your desk.

Before you get ready to go run out and buy one, the unit in question costs about $100,000. But for that price you get 96 1.2ghz processors, up to 192gb of RAM, and decent video card. For system specs, read the datasheet.

The DS-96 is intended for intense computational tasks that ordinarily are done on shared computers. Now, every engineer who needs one could have one at his/her desk.

The system runs on the Fedora distribution of Linux, which begs the question: When will Microsoft have a Grid-capable OS? A demo of Big Top on Channel9 would be nice.