How It Works

Grid computing uses networked clusters of CPUs connected over the Internet, a company intranet or a corporate WAN. The resulting network of CPUs acts as a foundation for a set of grid-enabling software tools. These tools let the grid accept a large computing job and break it down into tens, hundreds or thousands of independent tasks. The tools then search the grid for available resources, assign tasks to processors, aggregate the work and spit out one final result. Grid toolkits also contain middleware that enables a diverse, multivendor array of hardware to accept assignments and handle all the same applications.

CIOs can realize significant benefits from building a grid, or so say grid solutions providers. Ian Baird, Platform’s chief business architect and corporate grid strategist, says CIOs are under incredible pressure to increase ROI in IT because they’ve already spent an incredible amount of money, and?particularly during a recession?companies are reluctant to spend more on additional computing resources. "The grid is a way to get maximized utilization of existing resources without spending millions of dollars on hardware," he says. For example, Baird claims that one Platform customer, a bioinformatics company, planned to spend approximately $3 million on new hardware to expand its computing resources. Instead it spent around $150,000 to install a grid, and it no longer needs to buy the new hardware.

Despite the potential benefits, grid-ready applications remain a rare bird. The technology best serves problems that are computationally intensive using algorithms that developers can break down into discrete computational units, such as genetic research where scientists must mathematically analyze thousands of genes in combination to find matches. And that’s not a task most corporations face.

Power Pushers

Despite its seemingly limited applicability, grid computing has generated considerable buzz. A number of major hardware vendors, including Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, have announced commercial grid-computing initiatives in the past year. This is part of a big push for them to sell more hardware, according to Robert Batchelder, a research director at Gartner in Stamford, Conn. The vendors realize that when companies install their own grids, they’re taking advantage of resources they already have. But?like Cereon?they’ll probably still need to buy more hardware in the end. And with products available from companies such as Platform and Entropia as well as the government-funded Globus Project (which makes the Globus Toolkit?a free, open-source set of grid tools), it’s now easier for companies to create grids. So the big vendors aren’t about to miss out on the opportunity to sell hardware loaded with these tools. "A company will throw iron at a problem, and someone like IBM doesn’t care what you do as long as it’s IBM iron," says Batchelder.