Grid computing is an emerging technology that enables large-scale sharing of widely distributed computing resources and coordinated problem-solving and collaboration between groups of users, as well a a place for software agents to work.
It is anticipated that grid computing will enable a rich environment for web services that will enable true exploitation of software agent technology, whether they be discrete autonomous agents or large-scale multi-agent systems.
Grid computing is also unfortunately a marketing buzzword that encompasses technologies as diverse as computing on demand, mesh networks, autonomic computing, utility computing, etc. If two or more computers are networked, the marketing department will want to tell the world that it's "grid computing". That's fine and to be expected, but the real promise of true grid computing is the dynamic construction of geographically and organizationally diverse overlay networks that enable on-the-fly computing arrangements that the original system designers could not have even imagined. Maybe we should call it emergent computing or distributed emergent computing.
Grid Computing Info Centre (GRID Infoware)
See the Wikipedia article for "Grid Computing".
[ Home | Blog | Books | Glossary | Links | Manifesto | Search | Contact ]
Updated: November 26, 2005 05:58:22 PM -0500
Copyright © 2005 John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology