O'Reilly Network: Energizing Grid Computing

"Beyond all the battles between Linux and Microsoft on the desktop, Linux has already made its bones in business. IBM has invested over US$1 billion in Linux technologies, while Sun, Compaq, and HP have all made Linux a key part of their business strategies.

"One of the hottest areas of computing that Linux plays in has come to be called 'grid computing.' We used to call this variously 'supercomputing,' 'high-performance computing,' 'distributed computing' and 'peer-to-peer networking (P2P).'

"All of this terminology was apparently causing too much confusion in the marketplace, so the marketing-powers-that-be came up with the term 'grid computing' as a catchall marketing term. It's used to describe all of the various mechanisms that allow massive numbers of computers and almost unimaginable computing power to be applied to problems ranging from drug discovery and weather-modeling to SETI@home and computer-generated animation..."

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• GridComputingPlanet.com: IBM Launches European Grid Center(Apr 24, 2002)
• ZDNet: Open Source: IBM's Deadly Weapon(Apr 09, 2002)
• IBM News: Interview: Irving Wladawsky-Berger explains Grid Computing(Apr 02, 2002)