Heterogeneous Cloud Computing: The Way Forward

Heterogeneous Cloud Computing: The Way Forward Cloud computing developers face multiple challenges in adapting systems and applications for increasingly heterogeneous datacenter architectures. A major appeal of cloud computing is that it abstracts hardware architecture from both end users and programmers. This abstraction allows underlying infrastructure to be scaled up or improved-for example, by adding datacenter servers or upgrading to newer hardware-without forcing changes in applications. The long-dominant x86 processor architecture, along with high-level, portable languages such as Java, PHP, Python, and SQL, has helped assure the continued viability of such abstraction. Meanwhile, exponential growth in microprocessor capability, mirroring Moore’s law, has helped to improve performance for most applications that execute on general-purpose processors, including those deployed on clouds.