The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure (The Elsevier Series in Grid Computing) (Hardcover)

~ Ian Foster (Editor), Carl Kesselman (Editor) "This book on computational grids marks a major turning point in the evolution of the grid concept..." (more)
Key Phrases: distributed supercomputing applications, simple composite elements, distributed instrumentation systems, United States, University of Illinois, San Diego (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Beyond the Net, say Foster, Kesselman, and a host of impressive contributors, lies the Grid. While the Net allows users everywhere to share information, the Grid will allow users to share raw computing power. The goal is to put full supercomputing capabilities into the hands of anyone who needs it while providing for more efficient use of the supercomputers of tomorrow. The potential benefits to science, government, and business may well be beyond imagination.

Foster and Kesselman have gathered together essays, proposals, and ruminations of more than 30 distinguished stars of the high-speed computing and networking world in order to do four things: make the case for developing computational grids, provide ideas on how such grids may be designed, demonstrate how the grids might be used, and point out the research still needed to make it happen. While the book was written to serve as a possible textbook in advanced networking, it makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the future of network computing.

The text covers Grid applications, the programming tools required, the services that will be provided, and an examination of Grid infrastructure. Despite being the work of so many authors, the chapters are logically arranged so that the knowledge needed to understand one chapter is provided by those that precede it. --Elizabeth Lewis

Review

"This is a source book for the history of the future."
—Vint Cerf, Senior Vice President, Internet Architecture and Engineering, MCI Communications -- Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 675 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (August 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558604758
• ISBN-13: 978-1558604759
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,066,484 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book has several billion dollar business plans, April 2, 1999

By A Customer

The Grid seems like a book from the future. I've bought over 100 books related to the Internet looking for ideas that could lead to a public company, but this one is the best. The Grid starts with simple comparisons (Chicago came from rail and 'caching' of grain elevators and stock yards) then gets technical. The topics are covered by experts and include distributed computing, sensing,and teleimmersion, programming tools, services, schedulers, resource management, visualization, security, protocols, Quality of Service, operating systems and interfaces. The pen-ultimate section was co-authored by recently deceased Internet Society head Jon Postel, and is my favorite. If covers the past, present and future of network infrastructure. The last section is test beds. At the risk of seeming ungrateful for this gold mine of future net business, there are a few omissions that I missed including the Grid in mixed environments. Low-earth orbit satellites and wireless IP broadband could have been covered, as they will be the very important parts of the Grid. The VR section totals only about ten pages and, surprisingly, doesn't even touch on entertainment applications, though entertainment (including porn) has driven many 'seeds of the grid', including video, CD-ROMs, and streaming video. A few books that might be interesting: Peter Glaser's Solar Power Satellites is very complementary: with cheap power everywhere, the grid can cover the earth, seas and even leap up into space. If you haven't read it already, I'd toss Kurzweil's Age of Intelligent Machines into the Amazon shopping cart to fill in the AI and VR gap. If you want to see how grids could grow into gods, I'd also highly recommend David Zindell's The Wild. I'm open to corresponding about where The Grid goes and grows from here, especially from investors with the know how or desire to capitalize on the new entities that will grow out of the grid, or be used to create it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poor tech, poor future insights, April 7, 2005

By	BlackICE (Rome, Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Grid 2, Second Edition: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure (The Elsevier Series in Grid Computing) (Hardcover)

Before buying this book, I also bought the first volume. Personally I would say the first one being more interesting and technically adequate to whom wants a professional insight on what grid computing is. The second book seemed to me a simple marketing strategy: no new topics, no technical insights. Just an annoying list of accomplished grid deployments ranging from scientific installments to commercial ones.
I'm actually disappointed. I was hoping Foster et. al. could give me some new and interesting insights on what are the real problems of advanced grid computing concepts and techniques instead, I received a book great only for making the references to my thesis (I was doing my master thesis on grid mapping algorithms).
Moreover, most of the deployed scenarios explained in the book can be easily find on the net by searching for scientific documents on specific grid topics. Seems more of a collage of articles rather than a deep analysis of actual grid challenges, techniques and pros&cons.
I would suggest such a book only to newby wanting to get an overview of what grid computing is and what has been done to date.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Startling look into the future, March 20, 2002

By	Michael J Gambale (North Wales, PA USA) - See all my reviews

I don't understand some of the critical reviews of this book. The fact is that Grids do exist today and are being used by Research oriented companies. About two dozen companies are already serving clients in the realm of grid computing. Platform Computing, United Devices, and Avaki are just three companies who are helping to create the future of the grid computing. The web succeded because it connected everybody. Until larger grids are contructed for business enterprises I agree that grid computing will not grow. The book does a great job of showing what the future may be like in terms of grid computing. Someday your computing resources will come from your local Grid Computing Company just as you get electricity from your Power Company. How that comes to be is still the ultimate question.