Xgrid, not vaporware after all. [Merged with FH thread]

keyboardf12 · October 12, 2003 4:36PM

Think Secret:

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/xgrid.html

Apple recently put up a mailing list, xgrid-users. According to the page, the mailing list is for discussion regarding use and deployment of Xgrid. No archived messages exist

Can anyone say "announcment along with G5 xserve"?

Wonder how much if any of this tech VT is using?

Nice new revenue stream i would say...

placebo · October 12, 2003 6:16PM

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/xgrid.html

I'm seeing something really big. This could be a real hit with IT.

I wonder whether the VT supercomputer has been using this all along.

macusers · October 12, 2003 6:21PM

heh, well that sounds like a confirmation, I always wonder how people find this stuff out, I mean who would think to check the discussion list?

scott · October 12, 2003 7:02PM

Of course it can't be vaporware because Apple never announced it.

rok · October 12, 2003 7:09PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Scott

Of course it can't be vaporware because Apple never announced it.

i think the point was that they had "xgrid" trademaked or patented or whatever for a while now, but apple has been known to acquire trademarks and patents and never do anything with them. not "vaporware" in the truest sense of the term, but...

macserverx · October 12, 2003 8:18PM

Man, knew I shoulda copyrighted that name. Even put together an interface and a little Cocoa code (learn by experimentation when you can't buy books), XGrid name and all.

I've had two or three topics in these forums about this. Been wanting this for a long time. Hopefully they update all the pro or prosumer (FCX) to use this stuff well, then I'd have some use for it besides Mac > PC bragging rights. That Mac lab at school might come in handy for rendering my video projects.

Just thought, this is a users' list, who is using this stuff? If it's in Panther it must be under the tightest NDA ever created and to the most select members.

macserverx · October 12, 2003 8:33PM

Previous discussion with "XGrid" in them, as well as all of my comments on the subject are in these 2 threads.

XGrid....wold anyone?

Project Wolf/XGrid

Good reads I believe.

macserverx · October 12, 2003 9:05PM

Posted a reply in Future Hardware about this already. See here.

Admins lock that one or maybe combine here, since that one is in the wrong place.

I'll repost the links to the old discussions on XGrid though.

XGrid....wolf anyone?

Project Wolf/XGrid

Worth reading.

geekmeet · October 12, 2003 10:03PM

i told ya apple would do this.

many of you scoffed in disbelieve but its true.

go back and read my post on this subject.

telomar · October 12, 2003 10:06PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Placebo

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/xgrid.html

I'm seeing something really big. This could be a real hit with IT.

I wonder whether the VT supercomputer has been using this all along.

IT won't care so much but scientific communities and engineers will appreciate it.

barto · October 12, 2003 10:46PM

Yeah, but what is it?

Seriously, we don't know what it is other than something associated with massively parallel computing.

For all we know, it could be a high-speed proprietory interconnect technology (I doubt it, but it could be).

Barto

macserverx · October 13, 2003 10:20AM

IT may not care but they'll have to.

If you can save the company a few hours of processing time every day that's a a lot of time over a year, and a lot of money. Plus, you won't need to update your systems so often. No need for expensive complicated, dedicated solutions, just load up your systems with Panther (I assume) and roll. Anyway, IT will have to care because management will care. This could drastically improve the RIO of Macs which is already higher than PCs.

One thing Xgrid is not is distributed XCode. XCode is specifically stated as being distcc. One of my post in an old topic states that I think XGrid is QMaster built into the kernel. That's not very good actually. It would probably fit best at the "System Management" level in Apples System Architecture Diagram.

Try to list some things in XGrid

Rendezvous enabled- allows announcement and broadcasts of available services (XGrid enabled nodes)

Load sharing - for not-so-fine grain applications, have as many systems as threads work on a problem

Load balancing - for fine grain multithreading, distributed load to any available node (G4 or better is likely so things don't take quite so long)

On/Off state (admins)-turn on or off XGrid as you like, used primarily for backend servers (db, file, etc) to let those systems not get caught with other threads when they need to use power.

Look at the Echelon Grid site . The project seems to have died (they're expecting a demo in July '01) but from a quick browse, this is exactly the kind of software Apple would develop.

Xgrid, not vaporware after all. [Merged with FH thread]

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