Distributed Computing

A number of themes appear to be converging to generate what might just be the only new thing in computing for years. I’ve been interested in parallel processing & grid computing for some time, since looking at the Transputer some years back, then watching the developments in specialist applications coded to be run in parallel like Seti@Home. As a day-job, I’ve spent the last 10 years at Nortel Networks, in a variety of areas from access, through wireless to optical transport, and have noticed a number of developing themes. As communications costs reduce, and compute systems become more open and modular; larger systems are beginning to be built from dispersed components that are connected together across cheap bandwidth.

One of the reasons that parallel computing is a specialist niche is the difficulty in writing software for a parallel system. I also did a course in parallel processing at uni, which required the learning of a parallel language, so have experienced understand some of the difficulties. It really is a different way of thinking, more akin to hardware than software, where things happen at the same time rather than being sequential. You can’t just take a normal bit of code designed to run on one processor, and attempt to run it faster by executing it on a parallel computer.

Click to read more ...