LUNKWILL: Are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest, most powerful computer in all creation?
DEEP THOUGHT: I described myself as the second greatest …Deep Thought… and such…
LUNKWILL: Yes yes but…
DEEP THOUGHT: …I am.
LUNKWILL: But, but, but - this is preposterous! Are you not a greater computer than The Milliard Gargantu-Brain at Maximegalon, which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?
DEEP THOUGHT: The Milliard Gargantu-Brain, a mere abacus. Mention it not.
FOOK: And are you not a more fiendish disputant than The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler? Which can destroy -
DEEP THOUGHT: The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler can talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey but only I can persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. Molest me not, with this, pocket calculator stuff!
LUNKWILL: Then what's the problem?
DEEP THOUGHT: I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me.
(The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Nick Carr recently commented on IBM's new initiative called Project KittyHawk, which sets out to use their Blue Gene technology. The project aspires to create a “global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application”.
There have been a range of online discussions on the back of the article as, once again, Nick Carr manages to hit more than a couple of raw nerves.
The premise of the article is that IBM Blue Gene technology is creating computers of such power that data centres can offer vast amounts of computational power that businesses can plug into and use according to need at a particular time.
These supercomputers can emulate many individual smaller servers (virtualisation) so businesses can migrate their IT services to this new model.
Rather than data centres just offering a place to put your own servers, they can start to offer virtual servers or services, enabling new business models to be adopted.
The IBM technology is so fast that Project Kittyhawk can emulate the entire internet.
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