The birth of distributed computing
In the early 1970s when computers were first linked by networks, the idea of harnessing unused CPU cycles was born. A few early experiments with distributed computing-including a pair of programs called Creeper and Reaper-ran on the Internet's predecessor, the ARPAnet.
 
In 1973, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) installed the first Ethernet network and the first full-fledged distributed computing effort was underway. Scientists John F. Shoch and Jon A. Hupp created a worm, as they called it, and envisioned it moving from machine to machine using idle resources for beneficial purposes.
 
In another effort, Richard Crandall, now a distinguished scientist at Apple, started putting idle, networked NeXT™ computers to work. Crandall installed software that allowed the machines, when not in use, to perform computations and to combine efforts with other machines on the network. In 1991, Zilla won the Computerworld Smithsonian award for science.
 
The Internet brings new scale
Distributed computing scaled to a global level with the maturation of the Internet in the 1990s. Two projects in particular have proven that the concept works extremely well — even better than many experts had anticipated.
 
The first of these revolutionary projects used thousands of independently owned computers across the Internet to crack encryption codes. This project, the first of its kind, was called distributed.net — affectionately known as "dnet".
 
The second, and the most successful and popular of distributed computing projects in history, is the SETI@home project. Over two million people — the largest number of volunteers for any Internet distributed computing project to date — have installed the SETI@home software agent since the project started in May 1999. This project conclusively proved that distributed computing could accelerate computing project results while managing project costs.
 
United Devices harnessed the talent from both projects to build our enterprise grid offerings from the ground up, putting to use all the knowledge gleaned from these groundbreaking projects. To prove the scalability, security and manageability of the resulting technology, the Grid MP platform, United Devices launched the United Devices-Intel Cancer Research Project with Oxford University. This would become the largest computational chemistry effort in the world. But the ultimate goal was to enable this tremendous source of computing power to customers in their own facilities.
 
The big picture — the grid.
The term "grid computing" suggests a computing paradigm similar to an electric power grid-a variety of resources contribute power into a shared "pool" for many consumers to access on an as-needed basis. This ideal is still a few years off. However, there are key efforts underway to define standards that would allow the easy pooling and sharing of all computing resources, including cycles, storage, and data in a way that can promote mass adoption of grid computing. United Devices is involved in these efforts-for example, United Devices is a contributor and a Silver Sponsor of the Global Grid Forum (GGF).
 
Getting to grid — today.
At United Devices, we approach the Grid from a value-to-customer perspective. Desktop PCs are usually the most plentiful computing resource in a company or organization — and they are consistently the most underutilized. By addressing this area of the computing arena first and completely, we provide both immediate value and provide a foundation for an IT organization to build on as they move forward with their grid infrastructure plans.
 
While United Devices tackled the complex security, scalability and unobtrusiveness issues required for a superior enterprise grid, neither our vision, nor our technology is limited to the realm of the PC. The Grid MP platform is the first grid solution to expose its scheduling and back-end interface as a set of web services for application developers, to embrace the standards direction of the GGF into our enterprise grid platform. By working towards emerging standards, United Devices lets our customers move toward compatibility with future grid technologies and adopt upcoming technologies as they are developed while delivering the promises and benefits of the grid today.