The basics

Grid computing is a form of distributed computing that involves coordinating and sharing computing, application, data, storage,or network resources across dynamic and geographically dispersed organizations. Grid technologies promise to change the way organizations tackle complex computational problems. However, the vision of large scale resource sharing is not yet a reality in many areas — Grid computing is an evolving area of computing, where standards and technology are still being developed to enable this new paradigm.

Why is it important?

Time and Money. Organizations that depend on access to computational power to advance their business objectives often sacrifice or scale back new projects, design ideas, or innovations due to sheer lack of computational bandwidth. Project demands simply outstrip computational power, even if an organization has significant investments in dedicated computing resources.

Even given the potential financial rewards from additional computational access, many enterprises struggle to balance the need for additional computing resources with the need to control costs. Upgrading and purchasing new hardware is a costly proposition, and with the rate of technology obsolescence, it is eventually a losing one. By better utilizing and distributing existing compute resources, Grid computing will help alleviate this problem.

Delivering grid benefits today

IMany companies want to take advantage of the cost and efficiency benefits that come from a grid infrastructure today, without being locked in to a system that will not grow with their needs.

To provide customers the solution they need, United Devices tackled the complex security, scalability and unobtrusiveness issues required for a superior enterprise grid, while building towards the open standards of the GGF. By embracing these standards, United Devices lets our customers move toward compatibility with future grid technologies and adopt upcoming technologies as they are developed while delivering the promises and benefits of the grid today.

The Grid MP platform by United Devices works by amalgamating the underutilized IT resources on a corporate network into a powerful enterprise grid that can be shared by groups across the organization — even geographically disparate groups. The most common corporate technology asset, desktop PCs, are also the most underutilized, often only using 10% of their total compute power even when actively engaged in their primary business functions. By harnessing these plentiful underused computing assets and leveraging them for revenue-driving projects, the Grid MP platform provides immediate value for companies who want to move forward with their grid strategies without limiting any future grid developments.

The benefits of building an enterprise grid with Grid MP platform include:

Lower Computing Costs

On a price-to-performance basis, the Grid MP platform gets more work done with less administration and budget than dedicated hardware solutions. Depending on the size of your network, the price-for-performance ratio for computing power can literally improve by an order of magnitude.

Faster Project Results

The extra power generated by the Grid MP platform can directly impact an organization's ability to win in the marketplace by shortening product development cycles and accelerating research and development processes.

Better Product Results

Increased, affordable computing power means not having to ignore promising avenues or solutions because of a limited budget or schedule. The power created by the Grid MP platform can help to ensure a higher quality product by allowing higher-resolution testing and results, and can permit an organization to test more extensively prior to product release.

Why United Devices?

Focused and Proven Technology. There may be other companies that offer PC or enterprise grid computing, but none that can boast the full range of technical expertise in this revolutionary field. United Devices stands apart for several reasons:

Focused Technology

The Grid MP platform is a comprehensive architecture that was built from the ground up to tackle the unique challenges of security, scalability, and manageability in distributed computing. Development was focused on creating more productive and efficient use of computing resources an enterprise environment today while maintaining interoperability with future grid technologies.

Unparalleled Experience

United Devices' technology was built with the knowledge and experience of industry pioneers. Only the UD team can boast direct responsibility for the creation and success of the largest and most successful distributed computing projects in history. Our development team includes the director of the renowned SETI@home project, and the core development group of distributed.net.

Proven Security, Scalability, and Success

To prove the security, scalability, and manageability of our technology, United Devices hosted virtual screening for cancer research on the Grid MP platform-which evolved into the largest computational chemistry project in history. United Devices has harnessed the power of over 2,000,000 PCs around the world with our software, generating over 100 teraflops of power and delivering results for groundbreaking research in record times. Only the Grid MP platform has been proven to yield results on this sort of scale.