National Grid Computing (CFC)

Grid Services Provision Call For Collaboration, submit by Feb.

So, do you share your computing and storage resources? Singapore’s National Grid (not to mention others around the world as well like the one MIMOS is working on in Malaysia [PDF]) are yet another attempt by computer scientists in 4 decades to put together a lot of computers, and then chop it up based on demand and supply.

For the technical folks, one of the best reference I’ve used when learning about Grid computing is this famous IBM Red Book: Introduction to Grid Computing with Globus [big PDF]. The Globus Toolkit is an open source software toolkit used for building Grid systems and applications, developed by the Globus Alliance and many others all over the world, so it’s a great place to start if you’re alone. Of course many other commercial ones too.

In the future, when we have totally separated the hardware from software when deploying systems, Grid computing and storage will play a bigger role than ever, as providers will float from one Grid resource to another. These commoditised entities will be built at more and more remote locations closer to cheaper and renewable energy, cooler climate for prolonged equipment life and eventually, vanish from our everyday life. We will forget that 50 machines are required to construct, say, a single detail page on amazon.com, or, one or many dedicated streaming server for every HD video stream to your home. We will start parking and archiving all our lives on an infinite space that we have no idea of its boundary, right till the day we die (someone might clean it up after that haha). This permanently extended brain for thinking and remembering will slowly transform our own brain function, specializing in our storing and retrieving and interacting with the motor functions of the body. Exams will change its form, testing retrieval capabilities instead of memory capabilities; complex calculations will be abstracted, as kids will want to see a monte carlo simulation done instantly.

Are you ready for this?

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One Response

  1. Hi Jiin Joo, as you mentioned about national grid computing, let me share with you on grid computing, but not on the national level.

    I first knew about grid computing couple of years ago. Lately, when I was forced to move from blogspot (after Google Blogger has accidentally my blog) to a hosting service, I came to know about Media Temple. My blog is currently hosted on its grid computing platform which it claims with a pretty impressive uptime and response time. I do not know much about the nitty gritty on this monster, but my blog has been running smoothly, even under occasional sudden surge of traffic.

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