Awakening the 20 , 000 Megahertz Productivity Giant : The Batch Problem Queue Pattern

Would you like to have a 20,000 MHz machine capable of performing like a mainframe sitting on your desktop? Of course you would, but even with today’s rapid acceleration in microprocessor speeds 20,000 MHz is still a long way off. You may however, have 20,000 MHz of processing power sitting on “your” desktop if “your” is taken to mean your organization as a whole, and the organization has two hundred 100 MHz person computers (PCs). The problem is harnessing all of this processing power in such a way that it performs like one 20,000 MHz processor; the solution is the Batch Problem Queue pattern. This pattern, used in a client/server architecture, has successfully harnessed the collective processing power in systems with as few as three PCs to as many as 200(the latter providing the 20,000 MHz power alluded to above). The pattern has allowed client/server systems to perform tasks usually performed on a mainframe.