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<title>Commodity computing</title>

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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Commodity computing</span></span>

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<div id="mw-content-text" class="mw-body-content mw-content-ltr" lang="en" dir="ltr"><div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><p><b>Commodity computing</b> (also known as <b>commodity cluster computing</b>) involves the use of large numbers of already-available computing components for <a href="Parallel_computing" title="Parallel computing">parallel computing</a>, to get the greatest amount of useful computation at low cost.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> This is a useful alternative to high-cost <a href="Superminicomputer" title="Superminicomputer">superminicomputers</a> or boutique computers. Commodity computers are <a href="Computer_system" class="mw-redirect" title="Computer system">computer systems</a> - manufactured by multiple vendors - incorporating components based on <a href="Open_standard" title="Open standard">open standards</a>.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Characteristics">Characteristics</h2></div>

<p>Such systems are said to be based on standardized computer components, since the standardization process promotes lower costs and less differentiation among vendors' products. Standardization and decreased differentiation lower the switching or exit cost from any given vendor, increasing purchasers' leverage and preventing <a href="Vendor_lock-in" title="Vendor lock-in">lock-in</a>.

</p><p>A governing principle of commodity computing is that it is preferable to have more low-performance, low-cost hardware working in parallel (scalar computing) (e.g. <a href="Advanced_Micro_Devices" class="mw-redirect" title="Advanced Micro Devices">AMD</a> x86 <a href="Complex_instruction_set_computing" class="mw-redirect" title="Complex instruction set computing">CISC</a><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>) than to have fewer high-performance, high-cost hardware items<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> (e.g. IBM <a href="POWER7" title="POWER7">POWER7</a> or <a href="Sun_Microsystems" title="Sun Microsystems">Sun</a>-<a href="Oracle_Corporation" title="Oracle Corporation">Oracle's</a> <a href="SPARC" title="SPARC">SPARC</a><sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-4"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>4<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> <a href="Reduced_instruction_set_computing" class="mw-redirect" title="Reduced instruction set computing">RISC</a>). At some point, the number of discrete systems in a cluster will be greater than the <a href="Mean_time_between_failures" title="Mean time between failures">mean time between failures</a> (MTBF) for any hardware platform, no matter how reliable, so <a href="Fault_tolerance" title="Fault tolerance">fault tolerance</a> must be built into the controlling software.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-5"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>5<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-6"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>6<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

Purchases should be optimized on cost-per-unit-of-performance, not just on absolute performance-per-CPU at any cost.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="History">History</h2></div>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="The_mid-1960s_to_early_1980s">The mid-1960s to early 1980s</h3></div>

<p>The first computers were large, expensive and proprietary. The move towards commodity computing began when <a href="Digital_Equipment_Corporation" title="Digital Equipment Corporation">DEC</a> introduced the <a href="PDP-8" title="PDP-8">PDP-8</a> in 1965. This was a computer that was relatively small and inexpensive enough that a department could purchase one without convening a meeting of the board of directors. The entire <a href="Minicomputer" title="Minicomputer">minicomputer</a> industry sprang up to supply the demand for 'small' computers like the PDP-8. Unfortunately, each of the many different brands of minicomputers had to stand on its own because there was no software and very little hardware compatibility between the brands.

</p><p>When the first general purpose <a href="Microprocessor" title="Microprocessor">microprocessor</a> was introduced in 1971 (<a href="Intel_4004" title="Intel 4004">Intel 4004</a>) it immediately began chipping away at the low end of the computer market, replacing <a href="Embedded_system" title="Embedded system">embedded minicomputers</a> in many industrial devices.

</p><p>This process accelerated in 1977 with the introduction of the first commodity-like <a href="Microcomputer" title="Microcomputer">microcomputer</a>, the <a href="Apple_II" title="Apple II">Apple II</a>. With the development of the <a href="VisiCalc" title="VisiCalc">VisiCalc</a> application in 1979, microcomputers broke out of the factory and began entering office suites in large quantities, but still through the back door.

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<p>The <a href="IBM_Personal_Computer" title="IBM Personal Computer">IBM PC</a> was introduced in 1981 and immediately began displacing <a href="Apple_II" title="Apple II">Apple II</a> systems in the corporate world, but commodity computing as we know it today truly began when <a href="Compaq" title="Compaq">Compaq</a> developed the first true <a href="IBM_PC_compatible" title="IBM PC compatible">IBM PC compatible</a>. More and more PC-compatible microcomputers began coming into big companies through the front door and commodity computing was well established.

</p><p>During the 1980s, microcomputers began displacing larger computers in a serious way. At first, price was the key justification but by the late 1980s and early 1990s, <a href="Very-large-scale_integration" title="Very-large-scale integration">VLSI</a> <a href="Semiconductor" title="Semiconductor">semiconductor</a> technology had evolved to the point where microprocessor performance began to eclipse the performance of <a href="Discrete_logic" class="mw-redirect" title="Discrete logic">discrete logic</a> designs. These traditional designs were limited by <a href="Speed-of-light" class="mw-redirect" title="Speed-of-light">speed-of-light</a> delay issues inherent in any CPU larger than a single chip, and performance alone began driving the success of microprocessor-based systems.

</p><p>By the mid-1990s, nearly all computers made were based on microprocessors, and the majority of general purpose microprocessors were implementations of the <a href="X86" title="X86">x86</a> <a href="Instruction_set_architecture" title="Instruction set architecture">instruction set architecture</a>. Although there was a time when every traditional computer manufacturer had its own proprietary micro-based designs, there are only a few manufacturers of non-commodity computer systems today.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Today">Today</h3></div>

<p>Today, there are fewer and fewer general business computing requirements that cannot be met with off-the-shelf commodity computers. It is likely that the low-end of the supermicrocomputer genre will continue to be pushed upward by increasingly powerful commodity microcomputers.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Deployment">Deployment</h2></div>

<ul><li><a href="Amazon_EC2" class="mw-redirect" title="Amazon EC2">Amazon EC2</a></li>

<li><a href="Baidu" title="Baidu">Baidu</a></li>

<li><a href="Facebook" title="Facebook">Facebook</a></li>

<li><a href="Google_Compute_Engine" title="Google Compute Engine">Google Compute Engine</a></li>

<li><a href="ImageShack" title="ImageShack">ImageShack</a></li>

<li><a href="LinkedIn" title="LinkedIn">LinkedIn</a></li>

<li><i><a href="The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times">The New York Times</a></i></li>

<li><a href="Twitter" title="Twitter">Twitter</a></li>

<li><a href="Yahoo!" class="mw-redirect" title="Yahoo!">Yahoo!</a></li></ul>

<ul><li><a href="Commercial_off-the-shelf" title="Commercial off-the-shelf">Commercial off-the-shelf</a> (COTS)</li>

<li><a href="PlayStation_3_cluster" title="PlayStation 3 cluster">PlayStation 3 cluster</a></li>

<li><a href="Beowulf_cluster" title="Beowulf cluster">Beowulf cluster</a></li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>

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</style><cite id="CITEREFJohn_E._DorbandJosephine_Palencia_RaytheonUdaya_Ranawake" class="citation web cs1">John E. Dorband; Josephine Palencia Raytheon; Udaya Ranawake. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://spacejournal.ohio.edu/pdf/Dorband.pdf">"Commodity Computing Clusters at Goddard Space Flight Center"</a> <span class="cs1-format">(PDF)</span>. Goddard Space Flight Center<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">2010-03-07</span></span>. <q>The purpose of commodity cluster computing is to utilize large numbers of readily available computing components for parallel computing to obtaining the greatest amount of useful computations for the least cost. The issue of the cost of a computational resource is key to computational science and data processing at GSFC as it is at most other places, the difference being that the need at GSFC far exceeds any expectation of meeting that need.</q></cite></span>

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<li id="cite_note-2"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9154518/IBM_HP_servers_won_t_stop_x86_onslaught_on_Unix">"IBM, HP servers won't stop x86 onslaught on Unix"</a>. 9 February 2010.</cite></span>

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<li id="cite_note-3"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://research.google.com/pubs/DistributedSystemsandParallelComputing.html">"Publications – Google Research"</a>.</cite></span>

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<li id="cite_note-4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-4">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ssi/pm/rg/n/poo03017usen/POO03017USEN.PDF">ftp.software.ibm.com</a></span>

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<li id="cite_note-5"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite id="CITEREFBarrosoHölzle2009" class="citation journal cs1">Barroso, Luiz André; Hölzle, Urs (2009). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.2200%2FS00193ED1V01Y200905CAC006">"The Datacenter as a Computer: An Introduction to the Design of Warehouse-Scale Machines"</a>. <i>Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture</i>. <b>4</b>: <span class="nowrap">1–</span>108. <a href="Doi_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="Doi (identifier)">doi</a>:<span class="id-lock-free" title="Freely accessible"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.2200%2FS00193ED1V01Y200905CAC006">10.2200/S00193ED1V01Y200905CAC006</a></span>.</cite></span>

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<li id="cite_note-6"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110810085127/http://insidehpc.com/2008/06/02/google-fellow-sheds-some-light-on-infrastructure-robustness-in-face-of-failure/">"Google Fellow sheds some light on infrastructure, robustness in face of failure | insideHPC.com"</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://insidehpc.com/2008/06/02/google-fellow-sheds-some-light-on-infrastructure-robustness-in-face-of-failure">the original</a> on 2011-08-10<span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">2010-03-06</span></span>.</cite></span>

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2></div>

<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110810085127/http://insidehpc.com/2008/06/02/google-fellow-sheds-some-light-on-infrastructure-robustness-in-face-of-failure/">Inside HPC</a></li>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100209210545/http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce-osdi04-slides/index-auto-0021.html">Fault tolerance Handled via re-execution</a></li>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://hadoop.apache.org/">HADOOP</a></li>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://google-services.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-machine.html">Google Commodity computing models</a></li>

<li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160327235023/http://enterprisesystemsmedia.com/article/big-lie-revealed-commodity-servers-not-cheaper-than-mainframe">The Big Lie Revealed</a></li></ul></div><div><div class="zim-footer">

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