One Computer to Rule Them All

An anonymous reader writes "IBM has published a research paper describing an initiative called Project Kittyhawk, aimed at building "a global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application." Nicholas Carr describes the paper with the words "Forget Thomas Watson's apocryphal remark that the world may need only five computers. Maybe it needs just one." Here is the original paper."

Yeah, right...

[Yetihehe]

Not gonna happen. One computer - one organization as the power. Does all corporations use gmail? No. The ssame with OSCPW (One Super Computer Per World).

Good idea

[stjobe]

Putting all of your eggs in one basket always seemed like a good idea...

Hosting the entire internet?

[dreamchaser]

Huh? The Internet is not an application. It's just a big network. Sounds like marketing speak to me.

Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of Internets! Bah.

So basically...

[AltGrendel]

...they are going to patent the Storm Worm computer virus.

Re:Yeah, right...

[tritonman]

Hell, even gmail isn't hosted all on one computer. This has to be the dumbest thing that I've ever heard. Who ever heard of a global network becoming an "application" hosted on one computer? What planet are these people from?

Re:machine city

[jawtheshark]

Wouldn't the Terminator series be more on topic than The Matrix?

Reinventing torrents?

[Stan Vassilev]

I can't wait to be submit my credit card, using my e-banking or book airline tickets, to a bunch of random desktop machines hosting a distributed web application.

I'm using edge cases? I'm being biased? Well, here's how IBM describes their project: "Such a computer would be capable of hosting not only individual web-scale workloads but the entire Internet."

The *entire* Internet is vastly more complex and demanding on its *backend* than its *frontend* reveals. What can be hosted entirely on a distributed network of desktop machines precludes many trusted and secure online transactions we make use of in the Internet today. It's obvious from the get go, that this will be only usable for a limited subset of online applications (like, hosting Wikipedia for ex.?) , but I guess making overly broad statements caught the eye of some bloggers and journalists.

Re:Good idea

[morgan_greywolf]

Putting all of your eggs in one basket always seemed like a good idea...

Oh, I'm sure a massive supercomputer design from a company with the large-scale computing experience of IBM would be far from putting all your eggs in one basket. Have you ever worked on IBM mainframe equipment? This stuff has redundancies up the wazoo -- everything from multiple redundant power paths to multiple redundant CPUs and mainboards. You know how everyone brags about Linux servers have "three 9s" uptime? Screw "three 9s". IBMs large-scale computers have -- for all intents and purposes -- 100% uptime. This is why banks and financial institutions and governments and militaries rely on such machines -- because when you need it to run all the time and never go down, you get a mainframe. IBM's supercomputers are no different in that respect.

Re:Yeah, right...

[somersault]

At which point you start to see were IBM's idea actually make sense--they are talking about building a worldwide, distributed, networked collection of cooperating computers... HEY, that sounds an awful lot like the Internet!!

That's what I was thinking. Have they applied for a patent for this system, by any chance? ;)

Actually your wrong.

[LWATCDR]

I did read the article. IBM is talking about running it on a Blue Gene type of machine.
The Blue Gene is sort of a cluster in a box but it isn't what your talking about.
Maybe they think a cluster of Blue Gene's might be what they are thinking of.
I doubt that they are planing replacing the Internet with one machine but a Blue Gene might replace Google's cluster. It might even be cheaper, faster, user less power, and be easier to manage. IBM has decades of experience making systems that have up times of years so being a single point of failure is less of an issue than many people might think.

I have to find the idea of a Blue Gene running LAMP is very very odd but hey IBM did it.
The headline is catchy but the real meat of the story is that IBM thinks that Blue Gene could replace a data center full of 1U servers. So no not the internet hosted on one machine but EBay, Goggle, or Yahoo hosted on one machine.

"There is another system"

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Forbin: "The computer center contains over one-hundred thousand remote sensors and communication devices which monitor all electronic transmissions, such as microwave, laser, radio and television communications, data communications from satellites in orbit all over the world. ... Colossus works completely without human aid. We make no secret of where Colossus is located nor do we intend to conceal how it functions. ... Colossus does have its own defense. It is its own defense. In case of an attack on any of its information supply or power lines Colossus will switch on energy circuits, which will then take their appropriate action. It is self-sufficient, self-protecting, self-generating. It is impenetrable. In short there's no way in. No human being can touch it. ... Colossus can communicate with us ... and through this machine we can, in turn, communicate with Colossus. Now there's one last point. One inevitable question. That we have been asked very frequently before. And that is, is Colossus capable of creative thought? Can it initiate new thought? I can tell you that the answer to that is no. However, Colossus is a paragon of knowledge and its knowledge can be expanded upon indefinitely. I hope, along with all the scientists who helped make this particular project, that the immense power of this computer will not only be for the defense of this country but hopefully also act as an aid to the solution to the many problems that we face on this earth. And the many more problems that we will face the more deeply we penetrate into the universe. Thank you."

Almost immediately after the broadcast ends, Colossus displays a cryptic warning: "There is another system".

Re:The Airplane Rule says otherwise:

[Chris Mattern]

"Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane."

Wrong analogy. Having two single engine airplanes cuts your chances that all your airplanes will be grounded by engine problems almost in half.