On 12/19/07, Aurelien Bouteiller <boute...@eecs.utk.edu> wrote: > I have quite different definitions than Jeff. > > Distributed computing is encompassing all the "parallel computing" > models, including clusters, grids, master-slave, shared memory... > Everything that basically implies using several collaborating > processes to solve a problem (whatever collaborating means, network, > shared memory, RPC, data dependencies... ). > > Cluster computing simply refers simply to computations that occurs on > a cluster type machine. A cluster is -usually- a distributed memory > computer based on commodity hardware (but counter examples exist). It > may include commodity network (like giga ethernet) or more specific > nics (like myrinet, infiniband, quadrics and so on). As said Jeff, > usually the best way to use such a machine is to have a kind of > tightly coupled application. > > Grid computing refers to gathering several clusters (and sometimes > large databases and scientific instruments like telescopes that > generate data) and use them altogether. Compared to a cluster or a > supercomputer, this introduces several issues related to password > administration, user domains, firewall bypass, several different > scheduler collaborating, and quite slow network between the sites.
I understand that a major difference between Distributed Computing and Grid Computing is that whereas we *usually* have a set of trusted nodes in the former, in the latter case, we generally have geographically dispersed computers which use a separate authentication mechanism to come together and form a Grid. Please correct me if I am wrong Thanks, Amit -- Amit Kumar Saha Writer, Programmer, Researcher http://amitsaha.in.googlepages.com http://amitksaha.blogspot.com
