Emerging HPC Technologies
LinkedIn has a Question about Emerging HPC technologies. As not everyone is on LinkedIn I`ll crosspost my reply here.
First of all there is no general purpose, one size fits all type of HPC solution, so this question is a bit vague, Depending on your type of data, your type of problem and your type of application different alternatives surface.
People tend to split up HPC into on one hand beowulf and ssi style solutions and on the other side you hand Grid.
Off course it's not that black and white as Beowulf and SSI style became hibrid ages ago and lots of typical SGE environment are being used on a BeoWulf style cluster today.
Everything depends on what you need Do you have an MPMD kind of application or do you need long and heavy processing power on one monolitic block ?
There are lots of developments in both areas.
I see mostly evolution in existing projects, Look at XenoServers. , from where Xen originated. Look at Qlusters with their HotMigration product (or even an openMosix cluster managed by openQRM) or look at what Renaud Lottiaux is doing with Kerlabs
Everywhere you see different Virtualisation techniques involved , both upscaling to an SSI and downscaling to a point where you will be migrating minimal virtual machines (even JVM's or Database instances) over your network to the best resource to tackle it. We will lead to an environment where one can distribute load independent of the platform the machine is originally aimed for, and management of those platforms will become easier.. Virtualisation will also help the 5 to 9 cluster, just hybernate the desktop OS and unpause the HPC instance and of you go. But there's a long way to go till everyone has their personal unlimted CPU resources.