Imagine a world where your interaction with computers and software is drastically different than it is today. Imagine the concept of “needing” more power for intense computation for visualization, simulation and rendering just vanished. Imagine the day where we look back and can’t believe we actually had those big old desktop machines not only in our offices, but in our homes. That day is coming sooner than we think.
Many people call it many different things. Some people have even taken to being cynical about the word “cloud” computing. Most of these people are the skeptics in the world where change is difficult to accept. These are also the people that avoid early adoption and probably, in most cases, rightfully so. They just aren’t ready. These are also the people that haven’t felt the pain of desperately needing more power, simplifying and compromising their work due to the lack of power at their disposal.
But if you have felt the pain. The answer is often not simple. Those of us that fall into that category don’t simply need another bigger machine. We don’t want the hassle of maintaining and upgrading and being semi-satisfied for a brief period of time before our purchase is now outdated. We need way more than that. We need…….infinite computing.
This is the phrase that Jeff Kowalski, CTO at Autodesk, dropped on us like a bowl of cloudy goodness at #AU2010 this year in Las Vegas. The presentation and delivery was spot-on. Traditional computing will be here for the forseeable future. But this idea of having a lightweight (iPad, netbook, notebook) tool as the viewing device and infinite amount of computing power out there securely in the “cloud” is a totally different way that we think about computing.
According to Kowalski, a mindset change is required for people to grasp the true potential of this idea. There will definitely require a toolset change, but more importantly, people have to be comfortable to look at the source of the problem and embrace that a totally different type of solution may be required. A different mindset will be required. Looking at computing differently. The landscape for computing has changed, therefore, the solution has changed.
Being a die-hard simulation guy where I have felt the pain from the first day I logged into a unix machine, it makes perfect sense to me. I am able to run models on my laptop today, that used to require a cluster of computers 15 years ago. But, it is still not enough, it will never be enough. Models are growing in complexity, in size and people want to push the limits of simulation to the point that it closely matches reality. AND…they want it immediately.
The power of simulation is not only getting an answer, but its getting the optimal answer. In order to achieve that, you have to run multiple what-if scenarios. Running these models in parallel, simultaneously is a simulation guy’s dream. It is 100% obtainable today to do that, but the barrier is computing resources. An infinite computing model breaks down this barrier and changes the mindset of how we think about computing.
Seems simple, right? As with everything in the world, there are some hurdles to getting us there. The two main hurdles are security and pricing. Security is being tackled now by folks like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and the like. It’s not perfect, but it will have to be close to perfect for it to become a reality.
Pricing is a totally different animal. Paying for the compute time is easy, there are models like AWS that are alive and well. But, how do you bundle software into the mix. Paying for hardware and software are two different animals that will have to coexist.
I’m convinced that simulation is the way of the future. We will look back in amazement that it took as long as it did to become mainstream. Infinite computing is one of the biggest breakthroughs and game changers in Simulation. I can’t wait to log-on and uncover the impossible.
