more on Europe Exceeds U.S. in Refining Grid Computing

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:13:17 -0600
From: Adam L Beberg <beberg () mithral com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Europe Exceeds U.S. in Refining Grid Computing
To: dave () farber net

On Nov 10, 2003, at 9:28 AM, Dave Farber wrote:

> My own belief is grid computing may become significant when a number of 
> serious research problems have been solved -- like security.  (by the way 
> I believe we did one of the first "grid" computing systems at UC Irvine in 
> 1973 as part of the DCS project.)

The author of the article suffers from the same problem as everyone else 
talking about GRID computing - everyone has their own definition of what it 
is. It's a marketing buzzword :)

First they mention the types of things we did with distributed.net, 
Folding@home and all those types of projects. Have PC's will compute. If 
you have a LAN you have a GRID. A chicken in every pot and a GRID in every 
home business.

Next comes what in the US is the Internet2 project, where all the 
supercomputers on a continent get fiber between them. Europe definitely is 
a wee bit ahead in that one, but they have less ground to dig up between 
centers.

Then of course the "we have a HUGE computer, only $$$$/hr". The word 
timesharing comes to mind. And I don't know how many of your readers have 
actually had to try to move multi-terabytes around, but... it takes a 
while, and the best option is still Fed-Ex.

So which one is GRID computing? And which one isn't dominated by open 
standards and open source software exactly? Sorry, but in the open.* world, 
you're only ahead by one CVS update at the most so it's a wee bit hard to 
make money pitching such things unless you lie through your teeth. Science 
does not suffer from competitive problems with itself, that's for the 
commercial world.

You da man Dave. Yes you did it all 30 years ago (tho not the first I'm 
sure). And don't think some of us not-so-youngins forgot about it either. 
Here, read some funny history - http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/unhistory.html

- Adam L. Beberg - beberg () mithral com
  CTO, Mithral Communications & Design Inc.
  Home of the Cosm Project
  http://www.mithral.com/


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