Information Superbahn: Towards a Planet-Scale, Low-Entropy and High-Goodput Computing Utility

In a 1961 lecture to celebrate MIT’s centennial, John McCarthy proposed the vision of utility computing, including three key concepts of pay-per-use service, large computer and private computer. Six decades have passed, but McCarthy’s computing utility vision has not yet been fully realized, despite advances in grid computing, services computing and cloud computing. This paper presents a perspective of computing utility called Information Superbahn, building on recent advances in cloud computing. This Information Superbahn perspective retains McCarthy’s vision as much as possible, while making essential modern requirements more explicit, in the new context of a networked world of billions of users, trillions of devices, and zettabytes of data. Computing utility offers pay-per-use computing services through a 1) planet-scale, 2) low-entropy and 3) high-goodput utility. The three salient characteristics of computing utility are elaborated. Initial evidence is provided to support this viewpoint.