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January 10, 2004

Xgrid

You know the new mini iPods I mentioned the other day are cool. But the coolest announcement on the day was not about iPods.

AtAT ran the story:

Some of you may remember Xgrid back when it mysteriously surfaced as the subject for a newApple discussion list last October. Despite the fact that Apple hadn't actually announced any such technology, lots of people joined the list and participated in spirited discussions questioning how they were supposed to stay on-topic ("discussions on using Xgrid") when no such product yet existed; Apple pulled the list down a little while later without so much as an "oops, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" for anyone's trouble. Now, though, Xgrid is public knowledge, and Apple previewed the technology yesterday. The geekiest 1% of the world's population cheered loudly. And nerdily.
Simply put (because if we go into any more detail, we're going to fall asleep), Xgrid allows "scientists and others working in computer intensive environments" to build software that can use Apple's Rendezvous auto-discovery technology to find idle Xgrid-enabled Macs on the network and harness their power to share in the number-crunching. Can't afford to build a top-three supercomputer? No worries-- even your school's three Mac labs will make for a nice crunch-farm after hours, letting you make the most of what's on hand. And sure, if you're not one of said "scientists or others," that may not sound like much right now, but eventually wouldn't it be kind of cool if your G5 could automatically snag CPU cycles from your PowerBook two rooms over and your kid's eMac to speed up the MPEG encoding on that iDVD project you're trying to burn?
Besides, it comes with a neato tachometer to show you how much Xgrid power is available on your network. See? It is fun for the non-nerdlings! Vroom, vroom!

Posted by Ozguru at January 10, 2004 08:01 AM

Comments

It will still only work for technophobes like me when I can pick up a comms link and say "Computer! Run the data base for .... " and get a nice female voice responding with something like "Searching, please stand by ... The answer to your question is ...." With my luck it is more likely to be "This programme does not recognise the command .... " Still, we can loose £45 million worth of kit on a barren rock umpteen million miles away equally effectively!

Posted by: The Gray Monk at January 10, 2004 08:01 AM