Fabric computing

Fabric computing
Fabric computing.svg

Fabric computing or unified computing involves the creation of a computing fabric consisting of interconnected nodes that look like a 'weave' or a 'fabric' when viewed collectively from a distance.[1]

Usually this refers to a consolidated high-performance computing system consisting of loosely coupled storage, networking and parallel processing functions linked by high bandwidth interconnects (such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand)[2] but the term has also been used to describe platforms like the Azure Services Platform and grid computing in general (where the common theme is interconnected nodes that appear as a single logical unit).[3]

The fundamental components of fabrics are "nodes" (processor(s), memory, and/or peripherals) and "links" (functional connection between nodes).[2] While the term "fabric" has also been used in association with storage area networks and switched fabric networking, the introduction of compute resources provides a complete "unified" computing system. Other terms used to describe such fabrics include "unified fabric"[4], "data center fabric" and "unified data center fabric".[5]

According to Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute at the Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago, "grid computing 'fabrics' are now poised to become the underpinning for next-generation enterprise IT architectures and be used by a much greater part of many organizations."[3]

Brocade, Cisco, HP and Egenera currently manufacture computing fabric equipment.[6][7]

Contents

History

While the term has been in use since the mid to late 1990s[2] the growth of cloud computing and Cisco's evangelism of unified data center fabrics[8] followed by unified computing (an evolutionary data center architecture whereby blade servers are integrated or unified with supporting network and storage infrastructure[9]) starting March 2009 has renewed interest in the technology. Other companies offering unified or fabric computing systems include Liquid Computing Corporation and Egenera.

There have been mixed reactions to Cisco's architecture, particularly from rivals who claim that these proprietary systems will lock out other vendors. Analysts claim that this "ambitious new direction" is "a big risk" as companies like IBM and HP who have previously partnered with Cisco on data center projects (accounting for $2-3bn of Cisco's annual revenue) are now competing with them.[10][9]

Key characteristics

The main advantages of fabrics are that a massive concurrent processing combined with a huge, tightly-coupled address space makes it possible to solve huge computing problems (such as those presented by delivery of cloud computing services) and that they are both scalable and able to be dynamically reconfigured.[2]

Challenges include a non-linearly degrading performance curve, whereby adding resources does not linearly increase performance which is a common problem with parallel computing and maintaining security.[2]

See also

References

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • The Fabric of Reality — is a 1997 book by physicist David Deutsch, which expands upon his views of quantum mechanics and its meanings for understanding reality.This interpretation, or what he calls the multiverse hypothesis, is one strand of a four strand theory of… …   Wikipedia

  • Cisco Unified Computing System — The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a computer data center marketing program composed of computing hardware, virtualization software, switching fabric, and management software. The idea behind the system is to reduce total cost of… …   Wikipedia

  • Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture — [PICMG. Reference . PICMG 3.0 Revision 2.0 AdvancedTCA Base Specification. http://www.picmg.org] (ATCA or AdvancedTCA) is the largest specification effort in the history of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), with more than… …   Wikipedia

  • Reconfigurable computing — is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing fabrics like field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference… …   Wikipedia

  • Printer (computing) — A modern printer with scanning/copying capability Small printer …   Wikipedia

  • Fencing (computing) — Fencing is isolating a node of a computer cluster when it is malfunctioning. Isolating a node means ensuring that I/O can no longer be done from it. Fencing is typically done automatically, by cluster infrastructure such as shared disk file… …   Wikipedia

  • фабрика вычислений — Распределенная вычислительная среда Computing fabric это технология построения серверов, которая в настоящее время еще только разрабатывается Она рассматривает память, процессоры и подсистемы ввода вывода не как фиксированную архитектуру, а как… …   Справочник технического переводчика

  • Azure Services Platform — Windows Azure Part of the Windows family Windows Azure Developer Microsoft …   Wikipedia

  • InfiniBand — The panel of an InfiniBand switch InfiniBand is a switched fabric communications link used in high performance computing and enterprise data centers. Its features include high throughput, low latency, quality of service and failover, and it is… …   Wikipedia

  • Simulated reality — is the proposition that reality could be simulated perhaps by computer simulation to a degree indistinguishable from true reality. It could contain conscious minds which may or may not be fully aware that they are living inside a simulation. This …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”