September 5th, 2004
Grid futures
This week, UK particle physicists will demonstrate the world’s largest, working computing grid. With over 6,000 computers at 78 sites internationally, the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (LCG) is the first permanent, worldwide grid for science experimentation. The particle physics experiments at the LCH, which is under construction at CERN in Geneva, are expected to produce around 15 petabytes of data per year. By 2007, the LCG "virtual supercomputer" will be equivalent to 100,000 of today’s fastest computers working together, the scientists said.
Meanwhile, grid computing for enterprise applications is making progress. Commercial grid applications today include reservoir modeling for petroleum exploration, actuarial analysis in insurance industry, circuit simulation at electronics firms and structural analysis in aerospace and automotive companies.
Several companies—including Avaki, Data Synapse, Platform Computing and United Devices–specialize in grid software and have thriving businesses serving Fortune 1000 companies.
In addition, more mainstream applications are becoming grid-friendly. For example, Platform Computing has an adaptor for Microsoft Excel that grid-enables compute-intensive worksheets. Oracle 10g enables databases and applications to be run on grids, improving performance and increasing hardware utilization.
So called “extragrids” will enable enterprises to share compute resources with trusted partners and suppliers in a kind of federated grid. The final stage, which will take a decade to evolve, is the utility grid, in which compute resources are delivered on-demand in a pay-for-use model.
