These projects are now complete. They were concerned with the exploitation of modern local communications in the form of the Cambridge Ring in order to make organised use of a substantial number of machines. In particular, the cheapness of small machines poses the challenge of how to utilise them effectively.
The investigator set out to build an example of a distributed computing system that should be readily extensible, flexible, and controlled. This has been done, and though the DCS work is complete the development runs on in the Universe Project.
An extended account of the work is available in [1]. That work contains a full bibliography of relevant publications.
The present system comprises about sixty heterogeneous machines and gives a daily service to a considerable number of research workers. It furnishes connections to various mainframes and to the outside world, and demonstrates how a number of different machines can work harmoniously together on the basis of a simple interconnection. Numerous industrial visitors, including those involved in the Universe collaboration, have discussed the project and we believe that good models have been provided to help industrial system designers.
1. R.M. Needham and A.J. Herbert, The Cambridge Distributed Computing System, Addison-Wesley, 1982.
