A series of suppliers are bringing the power of grid computing
to real-world applications
Although IBM's new range of grid software, discussed last week,
possesses a special importance in terms of moving the technology
out of specialised sectors and into the general business market,
the company is by no means alone in pushing grids as a solution.
Indeed, IBM's
announcement
included no less than five other grid software manufacturers that
it would be working with to help it deploy grids. Two in particular
are singled out: Platform Computing and DataSynapse.
The first of these has a full
website that is well worth
exploring. As well as information about its
products,
which include what is claimed to be the first commercially
supported version of the Globus Toolkit,
Platform
Globus, there is an excellent selection of freely-available
white
papers on not just Platform's own products, but many aspects of
grid computing too.
The
DataSynapse
website is less useful. There are details of its main product,
Livecluster
3G, with further links to information about the
technology,
architecture
and
system
components.
Another grid company on IBM's list is
Avaki. Its
products
include a data
grid, a
compute grid
and the two combined, called a
comprehensive
grid. Avaki has a selection of
technical
papers and something called
Grid
Central, which has more links.
The grid company Entropia is
notable in two respects. It has perhaps the top two grid gurus,
Ian Foster and
Carl Kesselman, on its
scientific advisory
board, and its grids are based entirely on
PCs running
Windows - making them examples of desktop scavenging grids. The
product is called
DCGrid.
Another interesting company is
United Devices. It has a
series of Grid FAQs and details of its
grid solutions.
These include the
Enterprise
Metaprocessor, with links to more info, and the
Metaprocessor
on Demand.
Metaprocessor on Demand is a remarkable "pay-as-you-go" computing
solution that allows customers to tap into a grid of 8,000 CPUs
providing some 14 Teraflops. Those 8,000 machines are owned by
Gateway,
which cleverly uses spare cycles on machines located in its retail
stores
across
the US.
And if you need even more power, you could always tap into the
Global
Metaprocessor, which draws on the power of 1.8 million computer
systems around the world. The only drawback is that this
extraordinary grid is only available to those with "projects that
better humankind", such as
cancer
research.
Next week: Blog nation