Fabric computing

Fabric computing or unified computing involves constructing a computing fabric consisting of interconnected nodes that look like a "weave" or a "fabric" when viewed/envisaged collectively from a distance.

Usually the phrase refers to a consolidated high-performance computing system consisting of loosely coupled storage, networking and parallel processing functions linked by high bandwidth interconnects (such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet and InfiniBand) but the term has also been used to describe platforms like the Azure Services Platform and grid computing in general (where the common theme is interconnected nodes that appear as a single logical unit).

The fundamental components of fabrics are "nodes" (processor(s), memory, and/or peripherals) and "links" (functional connections between nodes). While the term "fabric" has also been used in association with storage area networks and with switched fabric networking, the introduction of compute resources provides a complete "unified" computing system. Other terms used to describe such fabrics include "unified fabric", "data center fabric" and "unified data center fabric".

Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute at the Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago, quoted in 2007, suggested that "grid computing 'fabrics'" were "poised to become the underpinning for next-generation enterprise IT architectures and be used by a much greater part of many organizations".

As of 2015^[update] IBM, TIBCO, Brocade, Cisco, HP, Unisys, Egenera, Avaya and Xsigo Systems manufacture computing-fabric equipment.

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