What are distributed computer systems and why is it relevant ?
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Simply put there is a limit to the resources one computer can have. There are only so many CPU cores, only so much RAM, etc that can possibly fit inside a PC/computer/server no matter how much money you throw at it. And even if you could, these things get expensive *FAST*.
The solution is more computers. However the way you run software on different computers isn’t the same as the way you would run it on the same computer. The super fast data speeds of things like RAM are intended to be used over distances of a few inches at most, and don’t scale out across rooms or buildings. So the idea of keeping all your data in RAM is just gone. The software has to be written with this idea in mind. How do you solve your problems with this new paradigm? How do you split your problem up into pieces such that you can minimize how much these computers need to talk to each other and that you’re not simply wasting time waiting for a response? What do you do if one of these computers crashes?
A lot of scientific research is based on these kinds of things. If you want to simulate weather effects across the whole earth, or nuclear reactors at the atomic level where there are crazy numbers of atoms, and so on, you need to take this leap. Now, how do you write the software to accomplish it in a reasonable way?
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