Truegridprocessing, where anapplication is distributedacrossmultipleprocesses such thatexecutionis alwaysco-locatedwith the data, providingin-processdata access performance.
It also facilitates the many other currency features that are so important to users, but not to governments, such as unrestricted person-to-person payments, user-defined anonymity and untraceability, near-immediate bearer settlement, transaction irreversibility, reliable store of value, multi-grid capable, and decentralized processing.
Sun's announcement marks the information technology industry's latest step toward "utility computing, " a grid system in which companies pipe in data processing and storage from faraway server farms, says Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, a book on utility computing published earlier this week.