Illustrated Comparison to Clusters

Clusters of SMP’s. Despite clustering, multiprocessors exhibit rigid system boundaries -- hard and fast limits on scalability.

COMPUTING FABRICS - Time 1, 2, 3 A Computing Fabric consists of richly interconnected nodes – consisting of processors, memory, and storage - out of which tightly coupled systems, called cells, can dynamically form, unform, and reform. At Time 1 four distinct cells can be seen: a cell of green nodes, an orange cell, and two purple cells. As time progresses the green cell shrinks, the orange cell grows larger, ultimately fissioning into two cells, and the two small purple cells fuse and expand to form a large cell. Cells themselves can loosely couple with each other through the fabric. These fluid dynamics enable Computing Fabrics to easily scale to meet enterprise challenges and beyond.