In the coming year(s) server virtualization, utility computing, GRID and other computing power consolidation technologies will be discussed and debated. Also, there will be substantial investments made by enterprises in these technologies. The business value proposed is increased utilization, significant reduction of hardware costs, dynamic load balancing between applications and the like.
Vendors like Cassatt, VMware, Platform etc. are providing innovative ways to consolidate and dice available computing power, in the end we can start looking at enterprise computing power as play dough that can be shaped per our requirements.
But, what happens to the 3 notebooks and a PC I have at home, or the several notebooks floating around in an airport? I wish there is an easy way to bring together personal computing power and bring similar benefits to our personal lives as promised to enterprise data-centers. For example, I wish I can aggregate or divide the computing power packed in my 3 notebooks and the PC in an uncomplicated way.
The breakthrough (if at all), I believe will have to come from the hardware vendors ( the Dells, Apples and the Acers of the world) by creating modular notebooks and personal hardware that will help bring computing power easily together in mini personal data-centers.
Imagine, when you reach back home from work – you take the CPU module off your laptop and plug it into your mini data-center, thus making additional computing power available to the Apple Mac that your spouse is using and the Sony Playstation your son is running a game on.
Are we there yet? What can be the challenges? Will Apple innovate or is this Dells sweet spot? Let me know your thoughts and comments.
This is a cool idea Nani. UC Berkeley had a project called SETI@home which tried to leverage the power of normal desktop machines to support their research on extra terrestrial intelligence. But I am not sure how important it would be in the personal computing space. I mean my laptop has several GHZ of CPU capacity. Most apps I run don’t use even a portion of that bandwidth; well except maybe for an occasional compiling of code. Most mainstream apps we use everyday are light on CPU and heavy on I/O.
Hope you will keep writing.
Comment by Anoop Johnson — Oct 23, 2007 @ 11:27 pm |
Great thought…as an extension to it, it would be fantastic to imagine how world be if we can aggregate computing power of notebook with the processor in our car, phones and home appliances.
Comment by Sanjay — Nov 6, 2010 @ 1:26 pm |