NEW YORK -- IBM is betting that computing power will evolve into a simple utility like electricity with users buying what they need from a computing grid instead of owning large computers themselves.
To capitalize, IBM is investing $4 billion to build 50 computer server farms around the world, said Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a vice president at IBM's Server Group.
IBM likened the system to computing power-generation plants.
"You'll get computing power and storage capacity not from your own computer but over the Internet on demand," said Wladawsky-Berger, who also heads Big Blue's Linux operating system group. "You pay for what you use, pretty much the way you do with electric power."
Governments in Britain and the Netherlands have already hired IBM to help set up national computing grids for science research, Wladawsky-Berger said.
IBM's vision of grid computing is based on networks already in use by NASA and in universities and research labs that link hundreds or thousands of nodes, or machines, which may be scattered around the world. The grids focus the computers' combined power on a single task.
An example is the SETI@home, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, a network that uses donated PC power to analyze radio-telescope data for sounds of alien life.
With practically unlimited data storage and enormous computing power, grid computing could accelerate math-intensive research into a cancer cure, oil exploration, a fuel-efficient engine or climate prediction, said Jonathan Eunice, principal analyst for Illuminata, Inc., a technology researcher in Nashua, N.H.
"This is making grid computing available on an Internet scale," Eunice said. "A large network now is 5,000 nodes. With this, you can open the bidding at 50,000 or hundreds of thousands of nodes. Even millions of nodes are open to you."
Grid computing uses an open-source protocol and software called Globus, developed by researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Southern California. The project is funded by the federal departments of Defense, Energy, the National Science Foundation and NASA, and uses donated equipment from Cisco Systems Inc.
Globus' software allows computers to share data, power and software. As an open-source protocol, it aims to mimic the success of the open-source Linux operating system, which reaps frequent improvements to its open source code, said Carl Kesselman, who heads USC's Globus development team.
The Globus Toolkit software is available for free download on the Internet.
Armed with the software and a group of partners, Globus allows researchers to form "virtual organizations" with members combining pieces of the research puzzle over the network, Kesselman said.
A typical use might be to lump together design elements of a new aircraft, from modeling for jet engines to schemes for the fuselage and wing shapes, he said.
"Many of the big scientific advances in recent years came from mathematical modeling," Eunice said. "Once you understand what equations apply, you can start simulating."
With utility-based pricing, researchers will have quick access to for-profit computing grids such as IBM's, which means they won't have to invest in servers, space to store them and staff to operate them.
"I may be able to afford 2,000 servers but not 50,000 servers," Eunice said. "This is much more power than I can buy myself. That's a pretty strong motivation to rent instead of buy."
Darker uses for virtual supercomputers also loom. Supercomputers are already used for nuclear-weapons modeling in the United States and other developed countries. Eunice suggested grids may be used for weapons research elsewhere or to break network encryption codes.
