Warehouse-scale computing architecture
Providers of large-scale computing capabilities and networking services to the public and to sprawling organizations such as governments, research universities, and major corporations often aggregate computing capabilities in large buildings, each containing perhaps thousands of computers.
To make the most effective use of these capabilities, it is not sufficient to consider the collection of computers in a warehouse-scale computer (WSC) as simply a large number of individual computers. Instead, in consideration of the immense quantity of processing, networking, and storage capability provided by a warehouse-scale computing environment, it is more appropriate to think of the entire data center as a single, massively parallel computing system.
Early electronic computers were huge systems, occupying large rooms. Since then, computer architectures have evolved to today’s fingernail-size processor chips possessing vastly more computing...