OUTSOURCED COMPUTING

This summer, there will be laptops for sale that run on Google's Chrome operating system. For five hundred dollars you get a computer that lasts around eight hours per charge, uses up-to-date software, and even has some free 3G access (100MB). With any luck, the new operating system will run much smoother than Windows. The most interesting aspect is in how the laptops function. Most of the data storage and processing does not occur within the laptops themselves, unlike most computers, but on the internet. These “Chromebooks” might just be the way of the future.

As soon as you buy a traditional computer, it begins to depreciate. New, more powerful computers are constantly being put on the market, and products from previous years are rendered obsolete. The same principle applies to virtually all electronics, especially cellphones and cameras. You want the fastest computer available right now, but in a few months' time there will be a new line of even faster ones. What if you only had to buy a new computer every decade to keep up with the times?

The internet is a worldwide network of computers. If you could relegate an individual computer's processing to the many computers of the internet, then that computer would exceed the limitations of its own specifications. The process is analogous to a desktop computer. When you edit a typed essay on a desktop, the text file is stored in the CPU. But you see the file with a monitor, and you edit the file with a keyboard and mouse. With a Chromebook, you may see and edit a file from the laptop itself, but the actual file is stored and processed on Google's servers. This is called “cloud computing.” Because most of the computing performance happens on the internet, you should not need to buy a new Chromebook nearly as often as a conventional laptop.

What's the catch? The obvious weakness of this technology is the internet connection. If you lose your connection, then you do not have access to your files. For people with constant, stable connections, this trade-off could be very acceptable. Another problem is on the servers' end. What if the company hosting your files goes out of business? Or some sort of damage happens to the servers? Then all your files would be lost forever, unless you had a backup hard drive, of course.

Cloud computing might revolutionize the computer industry. Imagine, in the future, buying a laptop for a few hundred dollars, but—because it uses cloud computing—its performance will be on par with conventional laptops that cost over a thousand dollars. You never need to worry about updating your software since it happens automatically. If market growth is manageable, then the computing power should steadily increase as Google updates its servers' hardware. Perhaps for an hourly fee, you can boost your computer's processing speed to that of a supercomputer. As Google increases its data storage capacity, your own allotment grows, too, like with inbox storage on Gmail. That way, you can store more and more data without buying additional hard drives. Data storage and processing might one day be treated similarly as electricity and warehouse space. Computing will be a centralized commodity, and personal computers will be simple interfaces that access that resource from a distance. Cloud computing could also radically change the video game industry. Game consoles currently require expensive processors and graphics cards, but someday they may become slim and cheap interfaces. Imagine just buying a game controller without the console. The controller communicates with your Chromebook which is connected to the internet. Signals from the controller are sent to a gaming computer network, where those signals are interpreted. The game's response is sent back to the computer and displayed on the screen. This all happens so fast that you cannot perceive any delay. Eventually, a Chromebook, controller, and a fast internet connection might be all you need to play video games from any platform. What will that do to the industry? This separation of interface from actual computing may become a growing trend. It is quite probable that we will eventually have low-cost laptops that are constantly connected to cloud networks, making them portable supercomputers.

3 comments:

  1. One question that strikes me is, how big a bottleneck is the Internet connection for the high end of muscle - say, for 3D imagery or games? I haven't a clue. It may be different for games than for 'still' 3D renders - I imagine a render farm can go faster than any (reasonably priced) individual machine.

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  2. Thanks for visiting, Rick!

    The way I envision it, a "render farm" would be so powerful that it can render the visuals and sound in real time (or even faster), then send that output to the user. The bandwidth required for the user would be the same as streaming a movie.

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  3. Well, that makes sense - I hardly ever watch video online, so I don't even think about it, but obviously current and coming generation stuff is able to stream pretty rich video.

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