Launched in 2000, the Parabon Computation Grid is the longest continuously running commercial grid in existence. Managed by our Frontier Grid Platform software, the Parabon Computation Grid is Parabon's extreme-scale on-demand computation utility service, comprised of servers and compute nodes worldwide.
Parabon's Frontier Grid Software Harnesses Idle Capacity from Computers Worldwide
- No HardwareSM. The Parabon Computation Grid replaces expensive, hardware-centric "brick-and-mortar" sources of computation with an online, on-demand pay-as-you-go service.
- Secure. Built from the ground up with the most advanced mobile code security capabilities, Frontier has safeguards for both providers and users. It's the most secure grid computing platform on the market.
- Waste nothing. Computers are used intermittently; estimates put server and desktop utilization rates between 5 and 20%. The Parabon Computation Grid purchases this unused capacity worldwide on the Parabon Capacity Market, in order to provide our customers with HPC computational capacity as a scalable utility.
- Think big. This incredible scalability means our computation utility can service larger jobs than any other utility on the planet.
- Go green. Lastly, it is environmentally friendly. By making use of otherwise wasted capacity, Frontier helps offset the enormous carbon emissions generated by massive data centers.
Hardware vs. No HardwareSM
| Hardware | No HardwareSM |
|---|---|
| Clusters, server-farms, supercomputers | Parabon Computation Grid |
| Capacity: fixed and limited | Capacity: extremely scalable |
| Usage: underutilized and intermittent | Usage: on-demand |
| Expense: hyper-depreciating capital expenditure | Expense: increases in value with normal hardware upgrades |
1 Taurus - A Taxonomy of the Actual Utilization of Real UNIX and Windows Servers, David G Heap, Principal IT Consultant, IBM Enterprise Server Group, January 2003 (reprinted here: Grids: A Low Cost, High Speed Alternative to Traditional HPC, 2003, Grid Technology Partners).