All Geekness Great and Small

Posts Tagged ‘cloud computing’

“Cloud computing” is the latest in a long line of technology buzzwords that nobody really seems to understand… or should I say that everybody claims to know what it means, but nobody seems to agree. Today, whurley published an open letter to Barack Obama advocating the creation of a computing cloud for use by all colleges and universities.

By advocating a use for cloud computer, whurley helps define what cloud computing can actually be and what it can achieve. For many researchers, the barrier to progress is not academic insight but technological capability. By making the necessary computing resources available to all, cloud computing can help lower this barrier and ignite a great leap forward in the academic field.

Cloud computing, in this respect, brings to mind such projects as SETI@Home and BOINC. Under these projects, the computing resources of idle desktops and laptops were made available to researchers working on computationally intensive research. While extra-terrestrial life still eludes us, over 1000 teraflops are made available each day to research projects who need them. Imagine what could be achieved with the full weight of government backing and the right infrastructure.

It was 1880 when Joseph Swan got his patent for the light-bulb. It wasn’t until 1926 that the Parliamentary Act to establish the UK National Power Grid was passed, allowing everyone to benefit from electric light. It was in 1951 that William Shockley got his patent for the junction transistor. Fifty-eight years later, it’s time we had a national infrastructure to bring the benefit of computing power to those who need it most.