Mainframes to Microblades

On my dynamic Google desktop, I have a content box that tracks the path of the Hubble Telescope. As Hubble was approaching the southwest coast of Viet Nam heading in a north easterly direction, I noticed in the column to the left a headline from Slashdot, “The Future of Computing”. Not wanting to miss out on knowing what the future of computing is going to be, clicked to read the article. Interesting. And then I read the entire article by Dr. Fomitchev. Server Based Computing folks have been doing this for years. We call it homogeneous grouping of applications in silos.

From Slashdot,

An anonymous reader writes "Penn State computer science professor Max Fomitchev explains that computing has evolved in a spiral pattern from a centralized model to a distributed model that retains some aspects of centralized computing. Single-task PC operating systems (OSes) evolved into multitasking OSes to make the most of increasing CPU power, and the introduction of the graphical user interface at the same time reduced CPU performance and fueled demands for even more efficiencies. "The role of CPU performance is definitely waning, and if a radical new technology fails to materialize quickly we will be compelled to write more efficient code for power consumption costs and reasons," Fomitchev writes. Slow, bloated software entails higher costs in terms of both direct and indirect power consumption, and the author reasons that code optimization will likely involve the replacement of blade server racks with microblade server racks where every microblade executes a dedicated task and thus eats up less power. The collective number of microblades should also far outnumber initial "macro" blades. Fully isolating software components should enhance the system's robustness thanks to the potential of real-time component hot-swap or upgrade and the total removal of software installation, implementation, and patch conflicts. The likelihood of this happening is reliant on the factor of energy costs, which directly feeds into the factor of code optimization efficiency."

Until the next post,

Steve