RSSSearch and Solution Giants Unite in Clouds
By Tim Conneally | Published October 9, 2007, 5:58 PM
Sometimes, it takes an esoteric name to open the floodgates of interest onto an idea that's existed for a long time.
"Clouds" is a term describing software designed to be rich internet applications that balance the computing between thousands of processors working lightly, rather than fully taxing a single one. Many current cloud apps were once remanded to the user's machine, but can now be accessed online and with minimal demand on the user end.
In hopes of informing computer science students about the parallel-processing that takes place in the Cloud computing model, Google and IBM have announced that they would be teaming up to provide several colleges with large clusters of several hundred computers upon which to learn and test.
The servers, a combination of Google machines and IBM BladeCenter and System X machines, will run an open source implementation of Google's published computing infrastructure (MapReduce and GFS from Apache's Hadoop project).
Google and the University of Washington have developed a Creative Commons-licensed university curriculum that focuses on massively parallel computing techniques. Carnegie-Mellon University, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and University of Maryland are the schools participating in the program.
"This project combines IBM's historic strengths in scientific, business and secure-transaction computing with Google's complementary expertise in Web computing and massively scaled clusters," said Samuel J. Palmisano, chairman, president and chief executive officer, IBM.
"We're aiming to train tomorrow's programmers to write software that can support a tidal wave of global Web growth and trillions of secure transactions every day."
I love how everyone is making comments about Google OS and adware, tossing in a few Anti_MS barbs for good measure when it has *nothing* to do with the article whatsoever.
I'm beginning to wonder if anyone here can actually read.
This is nothing more than a glorified server. It will help students design richer internet applications as well as, hopefully, spur the advancement of distributed/parallel computing.
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|yes but the smallest mention of the big guys brings out the fan/hate boys. like if I were to even say the name sony in this post someone is sure to relay to me how bad they are or aren't and how the ripped off their mother and should be hung and buried.
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|What!!!! Sony!!!!!
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|Oh yeah?
BUSH
Take that...
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|"a combination of Google machines and IBM BladeCenter and System X machines, will run an open source implementation of Google's published computing infrastructure"
Hurry up with that GOS. MS has taken us back to the Win3.1 days with the unusability of Vista.
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|down with the MS infidels! There is no OS but GOS (Google Operating System) and IBM is his profit I mean prophet
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|Or... this could be Google's IBM moment, where a massive corporation with a global lead looses the plot because it is tied to an old supplier.
I'm recalling that it was IBM who got into bed with Microsoft - Microsoft developed OS/2 for IBM, and then wiped the IBM floor with Windows 3.x. One day the world was full of "never got sacked for buying" IBM mainframes, the next day it was Windows everywhere.
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|To design computing that can efficiently manage Google software. Partnering in an effort to streamline adware to your PC, while collecting and uploading personal information to Google servers.
Count me in!
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|Yea this is true unfortunately...
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|One giant Zombie PC. I hope it doesn't declare nuclear war on us.
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