Networks of workstations are poised to become the primary computing infrastructure for science and engineering. NOWs may dramatically improve virtual memory and file system performance; achieve cheap, highly available, and scalable file storage: and provide multiple CPUs for parallel computing. Hurdles that remain include efficient communication hardware and software, global coordination of multiple workstation operating systems, and enterprise-scale network file systems. Our 100-node NOW prototype aims to demonstrate practical solutions to these challenges.>
Anderson et al. (Sun,) studied this question.