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Links adding up for grid computing

Whether it’s kids swapping music files or scientists looking for signs of life in outer space, computers are being linked up in new ways to tap unused capacity to do things together that they couldn’t do alone.

Some businesses even have started to harness the power from computers in the payroll and accounting departments to work at night or on weekends to solve design problems.

Once called metacomputing, and more recently known as grid computing or computing on demand, the concept of making computational power available much like electricity or gas service is a hot topic in information technology these days.

Grids can link hundreds or thousands of computers together in network clusters that pull unused computing capacity as needed to do calculations. It’s named for the electric grid, where electricity is drawn by thousands of sources.

Although it may seem esoteric, grid computing could be good news for people who must use technology but don’t really care to learn a lot about computers.

“We’re beginning to move into computing’s post-technology phase, where people don’t have to worry about being computer literate anymore. They’ll just use the technology and not think about it,” said Tom Hawk, IBM’s top grid-computing executive.

New technologies tend to be brittle, requiring much care, Hawk said, but as they mature and become more robust, users can take them for granted. That’s happened to countless other products and is about to happen to computing.

“In the automobile’s early days, someone planning to take a long-distance trip was well advised to take along some tools and have some mechanical knowledge,” Hawk said, “because it was likely he’d need to make a few repairs along the way.

“No one worries about that today.”

Grid computing should usher in a similar carefree aspect to customers, he suggested. A few weeks ago, IBM’s chief executive, Samuel Palmisano, said that his firm would make utility computing its top priority.

Other firms, including Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and EDS Corp., have launched grid-based initiatives. The goal for many is to charge customers for one-time use of applications or sell service subscriptions rather than require customers to buy, install and maintain their own software.

Illinois pioneering field

Academic researchers in Illinois pioneered grid computing and continue to lead the field. Ian Foster, a University of Chicago computer science professor and Argonne National Laboratory researcher, is one leading grid developer.

Foster and his colleagues have written software that enables grids to work, and they’re active in setting standards intended to advance the grid’s reach.

Physicists and astronomers whose work requires massive number crunching were the first to use the technology, linking their computers together so that many smaller computers could provide the capacity of a supercomputer.

But grid technology has migrated from universities to the everyday world, Foster said. Sharing music on the Internet using services such as Napster represents a kind of grid computing, if a somewhat limited example.

“When you ask for music through one of these services, there are no guarantees,” said Foster. “There’s no resource management. That’s not the way you’d want your electricity to be delivered.”

Another widespread grid application is seen in thousands of volunteers who donate time on their personal computers to the SETI project, named for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Radio telescopes gather signals from space and then apply software that looks for patterns that might indicate intelligence. Private computers all over the world perform these calculations while their owners aren’t using them, providing SETI researchers with computational power they otherwise couldn’t afford.

Many commercial enterprises that do lots of computing also might benefit from grid technology, Foster said, if the price is right.

“I believe we can do this, but there is the question of economic utility,” he said. “Can we do it in a way that makes economic sense for business?”

Some firms serving the automobile industry have found grid applications that make sense, said Mike Humphrey, enterprise computing vice president for Altair Engineering Inc. of Troy, Mich.

They could use computers that normally handle accounting and payroll tasks to do automotive-design calculations in their off hours, Humphrey said.

Pascal Aguirre, a senior vice president at Adventis, a Boston-based consultancy, said there is much pent-up demand for the types of services grid computing envisions.

“Chief information officers at large companies really are looking for vendors to help them integrate these technologies into a single platform that will reach anywhere an employee is,” Aguirre said.

Utility-style computing not only would find wide acceptance among large companies, but it also would open up sophisticated applications to midsize and small businesses that cannot afford to have their own information technology staff and an army of supporting consultants, he said.

As companies and academics work to extend the reach of grid computing using today’s technology, efforts also continue to apply tomorrow’s ultrafast networking to the concept.

Superfast speeds

Working with Illinois colleagues, Larry Smarr, a computer scientist at the University of California at San Diego, is building something called the OptIPuter, which is a grid put together with network connections that run at speeds that are faster than the individual computers themselves can match.

The OptIPuter will connect San Diego with the University of Illinois, Argonne, Northwestern University and others in a revolutionary way, said Smarr.

“Today’s Internet could be thought of as a Polynesian model, where you have all these islands, and people use canoes to get from one to another,” Smarr said. “We’re changing that to a jet-age model, where you can get from one city to another traveling at speeds far greater than what you travel at once you get inside the city itself.”

The OptIPuter project recently said it would purchase the first optical-switching router made by Chiaro Networks, based in Richardson, Texas.

Chiaro designed and built the advanced product expecting to sell it to a telecommunications carrier, said Ken Lewis, the firm’s CEO. But with the telecom sector’s depression and capital expenditure cutbacks, phone companies aren’t buying advanced equipment, so the firm was pleased to sell its device to the grid project run by academics and funded by the federal government.

The Internet began as a means of communication among academic researchers and spread to commercial researchers, then businesses and, finally, the public. A similar pattern is at work with grid computing, said Smarr, and it is fortunate that university-based projects can advance the technology while the telecom industry is in economic doldrums.

“University researchers can generate some market demand for these products and help get companies like Chiaro through the desert until the commercial economy picks up again,” he said.