Cloud or Cloud Burst ?

[Gopi]

Cloud computing is here. All of a sudden Amazon the book vendor turns
into a high-end server vendor, directly competing with the Suns, HPs,
IBMs and Dell's. Amazon in turn probably buys Intel and AMD blades.
But for how long ? Is the cloud the beginning of the end of the
general purpose processor ? The general purpose storage and general
purpose router ?

A cloud for video service delivery scaling up to millions of
processors may just get more efficient using a processor architecture
specifically designed for that purpose, used along with routing chips
- again designed to speed up video delivery.

A cloud for database hosting, well may benefit by processor
architectures specifically designed to improve database performance.

Not to talk of a supercomputing processor architecture which is
designed just to search !

This could turn hundreds of millions of lines of software completely
obsolete - opening up opportunities for new software and possibly new
languages.

Now this sort of thing has already happened with your mobile internet
device (or embedded devices in general).

Cloud Server Farms may soon reach a tipping point that will unravel
one of the most exciting and simultaneously painful transformations
that the IT industry has yet to encounter.

one may say - hey is a cloud not supposed to be homogenous, don't we
need just one of those for the whole world ?

Between storage x bandwidth x compute-power you already have 7 (or
even 8) different cloud optimization possibilities - empowered by
technology.

Availability x reliability x disaster-recovery x vendor-proofing x
geographic reach all will be additional non-technology areas for cloud
fragmentation.

That's not counting the market forces.

The boundary between hardware, software, network is all blurring in
the cloud. Wake up and find your window of opportunity fast ......
before the cloud bursts !

I will be interested to hear from processor and system architects
with experience about this topic. How mature is the "server processor"
market today with respect to the kind of processor architectures that
we are likely to see powering the specialized clouds of tomorrow ?