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New I dug up these docs that cover a range of technologies

In particular they offer various opinions on hardware chip advances vs network growth & network speed improvements.

The main point I guess, is that if network speeds do advance dramatically, then SMP will be equalled or bettered by clusters (clusters assume homogeous computing) and then GRIDs (heterogenous computing).

The case for GRID is that by the time all the interfaces & tools & standards are set, GRID will become the dominant computing model. IBM are taking this view & have announced they will GRID enable *all* their platforms.

Doug Marker

........................................

Moore's, Metcalfe's & Gilder's laws (Gilder: Bandwidth rises three times faster than computer power).
[link|http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0BRZ/12_22/98977161/p1/article.jhtml|http://www.findartic.../p1/article.jhtml]

Grid computing & Moore's law
[link|http://gridcafe.web.cern.ch/gridcafe/Gridhistory/moore.html|http://gridcafe.web....istory/moore.html]

Moore's law and processor chips
[link|http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50672,00.html|http://www.wired.com...282,50672,00.html]

Wi-Fi & Moore's law
[link|http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2003/103061003.asp|http://www.ciol.com/...003/103061003.asp]

Moore on Moore's law
[link|http://news.com.com/2100-1001-203750.html?legacy=cnet|http://news.com.com/....html?legacy=cnet]

Metcalfe's law & Networking (1998 - Jim Barksdale)
[link|http://wp.netscape.com/columns/mainthing/it.html|http://wp.netscape.c...mainthing/it.html]

Doug Marker
New Check out Infiniband
[link|http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/server/story/0,10801,89037,00.html?f=x76|http://www.computerw...037,00.html?f=x76]

Low latency data movement faster than any "regular" CPU can read it right now.

I forsee a mixture of of faked SMP and NUMA based on Infiniband. It'll give the single system image for ease of programming. Clusters will pick up on the next step.

For small data, high CPU partitioned compute tasks, Grids are the most cost-effective.

But corporate programmers are lazy. They take a single system model, throw a few CPUs at it, and it seems to work. They don't have the budget or the expertise to test real scaling. They release it, it become business critical, and the performance tanks. Right now the only easy fix is SMP.

I think we will hit a price sweet spot where 4-8 CPU boards are cheap and the next step becomes prohibitive compared to clustering. Mix in infiniband connections and you have nice building block scalability.
New Re: Check out Infiniband - Tks had not seen it before

In the mid 90s I did some presentations on ATM & how it was likely to provide the needed backbone bandwidth for the Internet to grow. An ISP in Singapore grabbed hold of me after one show & set about explining to me that as good as ATM was, it would lose out to Ether tcp/ip wholely because ATM required replacing what was already working (even if tcp/ip was not super efficient).

He turned out to be right. Am not sure yet if Infiniband fits into this category (will read up on it a bit more).

Tks for the link.

Doug Marker
New Apples and Oranges
ATM was for carriers who needed the small frame with the QOS for voice. It was way too expensive to the average company to use, and the expenses were ongoing. There were comparable speed alternatives at the next level down that most connections used, that were cheaper, and nobody cared about the latency for IP.

Infiniband is not that much more expensive than GB was 2 years ago (if that), while allowing for many times the throughput. Once you buy it, you gain the speed and you are not paying ongoing (unlike the ATM comparison) cost. Once in, nobody is going to sell you on a cheaper alternative. It shows huge expandability based on current tech, just by adding wires.

Can't compare the two.

While you can ride TCP/IP over it, that is a huge waste. Native protocol is MUCH faster. This is not a network technology, this is a bus extender which is faster than all current busses. I think the only thing that compares are memory crossbars in the current SMP boxes. And as a bus extender, you can then build real SMP via building blocks. Or really fast NUMA when the SMP locks get to be too much overhead.
New I found this diag on IBM site
[link|http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/grid/library/gr-heritage/|http://www-106.ibm.c...rary/gr-heritage/]

Halfway down is the diag that positions network perf etc: in relation to benefits of GRID

This introduction to GRID compares GRID with Clustering, CORBA & Peer-2-Peer. It handles the comparison quite well as the writer knows what he is talking about & seems to hit all the key points. Re Corba for example, he highlights the incompatibility of Corba with the web (exploitation of http & the lack of use of web end-point identiites). Web Services builds on the best of Corba by solving the shorcommings just mentioned thus taking full advantage of the web and *best-of-all* introduces the concept of dynamic late binding between interfaces. Something that Corba can't do.

Doug M
Expand Edited by dmarker Feb. 3, 2004, 11:35:50 PM EST
     Looking for people interested in a discussion on GRID ... - (dmarker) - (24)
         Im in give me a few days to catch up on the reading -NT - (boxley) - (13)
             Followed a few of the newsletter links - usual pattern emerg - (dmarker) - (12)
                 What is it? - (deSitter) - (11)
                     As far as I can tell ... - (dmarker) - (10)
                         Re: As far as I can tell ... - (deSitter) - (9)
                             Re: As far as I can tell ... - (dmarker)
                             They used to say that about SMP - (broomberg) - (7)
                                 Re: They used to say that about SMP - (deSitter)
                                 Perhaps I am missing some history, but... - (ben_tilly) - (5)
                                     I dug up these docs that cover a range of technologies - (dmarker) - (4)
                                         Check out Infiniband - (broomberg) - (3)
                                             Re: Check out Infiniband - Tks had not seen it before - (dmarker) - (1)
                                                 Apples and Oranges - (broomberg)
                                             I found this diag on IBM site - (dmarker)
         I've dealt with Sun Gridware - (broomberg) - (1)
             Re: I had prepared a series of 4 sessions, GRID wasn't - (dmarker)
         xGrid - Apple's take on it - (tuberculosis)
         after looking at the opengrid interface document - (boxley) - (1)
             Re: Yup, Older proven concept but new 'sexy' name - (dmarker)
         Re:Found this link. IBM & China - world's largest GRID... - (dmarker)
         Not just for web services anymore... - (slugbug) - (1)
             Re: Followed these ones ... - (dmarker)
         Summary plus additional thoughts ... - (dmarker) - (1)
             jumping in - (boxley)

For Thanks-giv-ing we had ta-ters, suc-co-tash and ru-ta-ba-gas.
196 ms