For over four years, the largest computing systems in the world have been based on ‘distributed computing’, the assembly of large numbers of PCs over the Internet. These ‘Grid’ systems sustain multiple teraflops continuously by aggregating hundreds of thousands to millions of machines, and demonstrate the utility of such resources for solving a surprisingly wide range of large-scale computational problems in data mining, molecular interaction, financial modeling, and so on. | 12 Architecture of a commercial enterprise desktop Grid the Entropia system Andrew A. Chien Entropia Inc. San Diego California United States University of California San Diego California United States INTRODUCTION For over four years the largest computing systems in the world have been based on distributed computing the assembly of large numbers of PCs over the Internet. These Grid systems sustain multiple teraflops continuously by aggregating hundreds of thousands to millions of machines and demonstrate the utility of such resources for solving a surprisingly wide range of large-scale computational problems in data mining molecular interaction financial modeling and so on. These systems have come to be called distributed computing systems and leverage the unused capacity of high performance desktop PCs up to machines with multigigaOP capabilities 1 high-speed local-area networks 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps switched large main memories 256 MB to 1GB configurations and large disks 60 to 100 GB disks . Such distributed computing Grid Computing - Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality. Edited by F. Berman A. Hey and G. Fox 2003 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBN 0-470-85319-0 338 ANDREW A. CHIEN or desktop Grid systems leverage the installed hardware capability and work well even with much lower performance PCs and thus can achieve a cost per unit computing or return-on-investment superior to the cheapest hardware alternatives by as much as a factor of five or ten. As a result distributed computing systems are now gaining increased attention and adoption within the enterprises to solve their largest computing problems and attack new problems of unprecedented scale. For the remainder of the chapter we focus on enterprise desktop Grid computing. We use the terms distributed computing high throughput computing and desktop Grids synonymously to refer to systems that tap vast pools of desktop resources to solve large computing problems both to meet deadlines or to simply tap
