Google and IBM partner to teach "Internet-scale computing"

Students at the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and other universities will now have the opportunity to learn hands-on about so-called "cloud computing" as the result of a new joint venture between Google and IBM. Also known as grid, large-scale distributed, or Internet-scale computing, cloud computing refers to the notion of large numbers of processors working in parallel to handle massive data throughput and analysis. While supercomputers continue to evolve and allow number-crunching on an extraordinary scale, cloud computing is focused almost exclusively to Internet transactions.

According to Information Week,

The fundamental architecture of computing is changing, [according to Christophe Bisciglia, a senior Google engineer]. Moore's Law still applies, he said, but now more performance gains come from processor density than transistor density. "You need to design your software to that it scales horizontally," he said, referring to the challenges of programming for many multicore processors working in parallel.

The article goes on to further clarify the need for this type of education in well-developed computer science programs:

"In this age of 'Internet-scale' computing, the new, evolving problems faced by computer science students and researchers require a new, evolving set of skills," Bisciglia explained in a post to Google's corporate blog on Monday. "It's no longer enough to program one machine well; to tackle tomorrow's challenges, students need to be able to program thousands of machines to manage massive amounts of data in the blink of an eye."

The initiative will provide students with access to massively parallel server and processor architectures managed by Google and IBM, as well as curricula developed by Google and the University of Washington.