Digital Computing Grid

[stinger25]

Hey Guys,
I was wondering in the near future of embedded electronics, smaller computers, and increased wireless & increasing bandwidth, would there be the possibility of and national (or internation)cpu grid that devices or future PCs rely on?

Think about a service like high-speed internet, except this would be a computing service that would compliment that and supplied by a company collecting fees just the same.

One benefit is that we wouldn't have to worry about upgrading CPUs every so often. Another would be devices we could use and carry around (like super PDAs) without the burden of cpus, cooling devices, and heavier power supplies.

I don't know, just a though.:beer:

 

[f95toli]

Something similar is being built in Europe right now (I think it is being tested right now), but it is of course limited to universities and computer centers. The origunak motivation is to be able to process all the data that will be coming from the new accelerator at CERN, but the new plans are slightly more ambtious and it will be used for "general " scientific computing,

But we will probably never see a "general " grid, the main reason being that no matter what the communication overhead is huge. Even "Beowulf"-type clusters than use very fast LANs are only suitable for problems that are extremely "parallell".

 

[Cogman]

hmm, (begins to think of the havoc 1 virus could reak)

 

[Shalmanese]

As long as processing cycles keep on getting cheaper faster than bandwidth, your proposal is impractical for all but the most limited applications. Instead, the trend is moving the other way with offloading as much processing as possible onto the end-user.

 

[Mday]

Its unlikely to happen. Although in some sort of way, you can consider the internet backbone somewhat similar.

There are companies that are selling computing as its product. That is, they dont sell systems, they let you "rent" their computers' cycles for applications such as a rendering farm.

 

[borealiss]

i don't think that would become a reality for the type of scale you are referring too. smaller mainframes, however, will always be of use in smaller environments.