High Performance Computing looks to the future

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If you take McNealy's comment together with the developments and changes in processor technologies that are expected to occur as High Performance Computing (HPC) moves into the mainstream it means that there now exists the potential for some subtle but significant changes to occur in the architectures of enterprise infrastructures.

Put at its most simple, the question becomes `if the network is the computer do we actually need individual computers anymore in the way that we currently know and love them? Do we need big data centres for example, do we need armies of applications servers, do we need PCs?

For the immediate future the short answer is yes, but there is an argument that many of those traditional computer systems could be replaced by something else - and that is the long term view of John McHugh, vice president and general manager of HP's network systems division, ProCurve. "Networking is the underpinning of everything now, the fundamental enabler," he said. "I believe that if HP is to use networking as a strategic weapon then there had to be a complete and credible networking offering. In other words, we need the credibility as an open market network player."

The fundamental issue that is now starting to surface is that some of what we currently consider core processor logic, that which is found in a server together with memory, I/O and the rest, can now be integrated into the network. At its simplest, if it is currently OK and sensible for the I/O, the communications technology, to be close to the logic could it be just as sensible for the logic to be spread around, close to the I/O?

This is, in effect inverting the classic systems architecture, for if the network is the nervous system then is there an argument that business logic Blades could be distributed around the network, located in network chassis.

"That is exactly where our thinking is and it is the exact question we are asking," said McHugh. "The question is whether we could get every application or service that is running in a datacentre or the network. Ideally, you would have pools of processing, and also distributed processing. So if an application is better managed centrally you have a nice, giant, scalable pool there. But if it is something that works better in a distributed environment you'd love to be able to push that as far out as possible and make it as scalable and distributed as manageable."

Typical applications that would fit this distributed model, he suggested, would be the application specific devices, such as web services accelerators, active management tools, and security tools. But it would also fit well with many new applications, such as video pre-processing. HP has a customer that is using such a tool to observe the input from some 6,000 security cameras in a hotel. But instead of a security operative facing a wall of screens there is just one. The system monitors the activity from each camera and compares the images to pre-defined patterns and rules. So, for example, if one camera picks up people suddenly running in a location that is unusual - a hotel corridor, for example - this is the image that is displayed to the security operative.

"The application can be written on any industry standard server running Windows or Linux, and then ported to the Blade server embedded into the network. That is the vision we have," he said.

Integrating business processes

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