Special Features:
IS GRID COMPUTING ALL THAT IT IS
MADE OUT TO BE?
Grid computing has already made a clear presence in many corporations
around the world. Everyday we hear another company- from the Department of
Defence to Pharmaceuticlas engaging another Grid to help colve complicated
problems.
The Grid community feels that there will be an uphill road ahead as the
Grid gets more attention. Ian Foster is convinved that as the Grid begins to
attract different industries, the nature of what we do will begin to
change.
Charles Schwab is one of the latest suitors to come calling, following in
the footsteps of IBM, Hewlett-Packard and a handful of other companies both
big and small.
A majority of the larger companies are beginning to accept the potential
that the Grid offers. IBM, HP, Sun are just a few. And the list is
growing.
The software, known as the Global Toolkit 3.0, is open source. "It's
available under a license that places no restrictions on its use," said Foster
at the inaugural GlobusWorld conference here this week. "You can sell it, you
can print it off and burn it. The only thing you can't do is sue us."
For the time being, however, all attention is on the release this week of a
pre-beta version of the next enhancement of the standard grid software. A
final product is expected by summer.
Tom Hawk, General Manager of Grid Computing for IBM said, "The Web is about
sharing information. The grid is about sharing resources. It's kind of like
the Borg -- all the resources become part of the collective, but in a good
way." It is these scientists and academia that have presented and proved the
power of the Gird and the benefit that it offers. The SETI@home project,
that puts the power of thousands of home computers in the search for
extraterrestrial life, is another successful example.
Replace those PCs with the world's largest supercomputers, add more complex
forms of interaction, and you can get an idea of what grid computing can do.
It's attractive to those in a range of fields, from analysis of data to the
coordinated storage of terabytes and pentabytes of information.
Scientists were the first to realize the potential of the grid and have
been using it for everything from earthquake simulations to fantastically
complex physics experiments.
Globus co-leader Carl Kesselman, director of the Center for Grid
Technologies at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences
Institute, is thrilled about the grid's new profile, but he and others are
also calling for calm. According to experts, grid computing will ideally work
invisibly in the background. "It's not going to be good if everybody goes,
'Grid, grid, grid!' without an understanding of what's going on," Kesselman
said.
Companies looking to capatalize on the Grid and its potential have been
very enthusiactic as we saw at the GlobusWorld conference. Butterfly.net, is
probabaly a unique example in the multiplayer video games industry that is
infatuated by the Grid. What is equally surprising is Oracle's claims that its
customers are already seeing the ROI ratios with the help of their Grid
software.
The financial services provider Charles Schwab, meanwhile, is exploring the
use of grid technology for data analysis. The company says it has the largest
supercomputer of any commercial company in the world, and the 49th biggest
overall.
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