Computing grids are geographically separated computers or computer clusters that share applications, data and computational resources. The term grid comes from electricity utility companies, which use a grid architecture in their power distribution systems. The following news clippings describe grid computing for lay audiences.

COMPUTER NETWORKS COMPUTING POWER ON TAP
The Economist, 21 June 2001
IMAGINE that every time you plugged in a toaster, you had to decide which power station should supply the electricity. Worse still, you could select only from those power stations that were built by the company that made the toaster. If the power station chosen happened to be running at full capacity, no toast. Replace the toaster with a personal computer and electrical power with processing power, and this gives a measure of the frustration facing those who dream of distributing large computing problems to dozens, hundreds or even millions of computers via the Internet. A growing band of computer engineers and scientists want to take the toaster analogy to its logical conclusion with a proposal they call the Grid. Although much of it is still theoretical, the Grid is, in effect, a set of software tools which, when combined with clever hardware, would let users tap processing power off the Internet as easily as electrical power can be drawn from the electricity grid. Many scientific problems that require truly massive amounts of computation – designing drugs from their protein blueprints, forecasting local weather patterns months ahead, simulating the airflow around an aircraft – could benefit hugely from the Grid. And as the Grid bandwagon gathers speed, the commercial pay-off could be handsome.

BREAKING NEWS
Globe and Mail, 5 August 2001
International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y., has thrown its research muscle behind grid computing, a new way of using the Internet to create virtual supercomputers capable of cheaply solving complex math-ematical problems such as weather forecasting or semiconductor chip design.

Canadian companies and researchers are also playing a lead role in developing grid computing systems and applications.

Computing grids are geographically separated computers or computer clusters that share applications, data and computational resources. The term grid comes from electricity utility companies, which use a grid architecture in their power distribution systems.

IBM is not alone in devoting research resources to grid computing.

Hewlett-Packard Co., Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp., and other computing industry heavyweights are also devoting an increasing amount of their research resources to grid computing. CANARIE, the CA*net3 Internet network and the National Research Council have formed Grid Canada to pursue grid computing projects.

Canada does not have supercomputer centres like in the United States, [CANARIE’s Director of Networks] Mr. St. Arnaud said, so its grid computing potential lies primarily with the many small computer users country-wide. “Since the Americans really are focused on putting their supercomputers together, we think a bigger opportunity is how we connect all our comput-ing resources in communities, schools, and homes,” he added.

Grid computing would have immediate commercial applications in a variety of industries, including aircraft engine design, crash test simulation, computer animation, calculation of fluid dynamics for the oil and gas industry and semiconductor chip design.

Many life sciences research projects are also trying to exploit the potential of grid computing. It is now possible, for example, for people to help search for a cure for AIDS by participating in a grid computing project known as FightAIDSatHome. From the organization’s web site (www.fightaidsathome.org), participants download software that uses the processing power of the participant’s computer to perform molecular modelling.

IN YOUR FUTURE: COMPUTING POWER ON DEMAND
E-Commerce Times, 2 August 2001
Grid technology is being pioneered by such computing leaders as NASA, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. Among corporations, IBM is working in the Netherlands to connect five universities with a computing grid system. The company uses grid comput-ing to link its research centers. IBM’s development is being done through the open-source model, which scientists hope will ensure seamless interoperability. In the future, especially with widespread implementation of Internet2 technology, computer users will be able to order computing power from the grid. The combination of the super-high-bandwidth Internet2 and readily available supercomputing power promises to deliver applications like streamed high-definition video, which could be used in telemedicine, research collaboration, and distance learning.