Distributed Computing Network of Workstations NOW

1
Distributed ComputingNetwork of
Workstations(NOW)

• The Computational Model for the 21st Century
• National Technology Grid
• Ken Dozier - USCETTC

2
Distributed Computing

• Attempts to utilize the combined resources of
  independent computational units
• Old idea, New Money - 300 M NSF
• Provides
• large computing resource
• reliability
• scalability
• Price to Performance

3
Convergence of New Technologies

• Networking
• NGI,
• ATM, Wireless ATM, Smart Switches
• Computing
• Large PC market, 2X every year
• Memory Storage
• Faster, Cheaper, 4X every 3 years
• Disk Storage
• Bigger, Cheaper, 4X every 3 years

4
Network Cache 10 SlowerThan Full Memory Program
5
High Performance Network
6
Massive Problem

• 26 Billion Floating Point Operations
• 3.9 Gigabytes of Input
• 51 Megabytes of Output
• Compare 16 Node Gray 30 M
• To 256 Node IBM RS6000 4 M
• 10X price to performance

7
Better, Faster, Cheaper
8
ETTCA NASA Regional Technology Transfer Center

• usc.edu/dept/NASA