Grid Computing By Michele McCoy

What is it? Grid Computing can be defined as applying resources from many computers in a network to a single problem, usually one that requires a large number of processing cycles or access to large amounts of data.

What???? Imagine a lot of computers, let's say millions. They are desktop PCs and workstations, mainframes and supercomputers, but also data vaults and instruments such as meteorological sensors and visualization devices. Imagine they are situated all over the world. Obviously, they belong to many different people (students, doctors, secretaries…) and institutions (companies, universities, hospitals…). So far you have imagined nothing new. This is pretty much what the world looks like today. Now imagine that you connect all of these computers to the Internet. Still not much new, most of them are probably connected already. Now imagine that you have a magic tool which makes all of them act as a single, huge and powerful computer. Wow!

A company can not access that many sources OR CAN IT? A company with slightly fewer than 2,000 desktop computers can harvest nearly 1 teraflop (one trillion floating-point operations per second) of computing capacity. Even better, the company can capture that power from computers it already owns that sit idle at night and work at less than full capacity during the day.

How did it all begin? Started as a form of distributed computing. The ideas of the Grid were brought together by Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman and Steve Tuecke, the so called "fathers of the Grid." Ian FosterCarl KesselmanSteve Tuecke

What Resources are shared: Can be much more than just computers: Storage Sensors for experiments at particular sites in the grid Application Software Databases

How it works (simplified) Resource 3 Grid Computing Company Resource 2 Resource 1 Resource 5 Resource 4

How it works (detailed)

Why would a company want to use it? Features and Benefits for a company Time to market Increase quality/reliability and add features Harness all available resources Flexible, scalable compute environment Ability to use lower cost commodity hardware Do things you couldn't do before

Why would anyone want to lend their computer? Some just like to feel that they are participating in finding ET. Or they may feel strongly for a company or problem that a company is trying to solve. Or maybe they are just curious.

What are its benefits overall? It offers the potential of virtual organizations –groups of people both geographically and organizationally distributed working together on problems, sharing computers AND other resources such as databases and experimental equipment.

Examples In the Beginning: In Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence ( Now: Save women’s lives (Using the power of the grid to more accurately detect breast cancer)

Disadvantages for companies Enlist a higher quality of components Enlist a higher quality of components Have a secure environment Have a secure environment Have Virus Protection Have Virus Protection Viruses Hackers Inadequate Equipment Inadequate Equipment

Disadvantages if you are lending your computer 1. Viruses 2. Hackers 3. Application Failure 4. Hardware Failure

Grid Organizations Global Grid Forum (GGF): – –a community-initiated forum of thousands of individuals from industry and research leading the global standardization effort for grid computing. The Globus Alliance: – –conducts research and development to create fundamental technologies behind the "Grid," which lets people share computing power, databases, and other on-line tools securely across corporate, institutional, and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy.

Grid computing is the information technology infrastructure of the future Questions

Reference Sites atomy.pdfhttp:// atomy.pdf sa.pdf mlhttp:// ml