Amazon Web Services quietly released on Tuesday a pair of new instances on its EC2 cloud computing service. Not just new instances but a whole new type of instance aimed at 2D and 3D graphical computing. For the first time from AWS in a generally available instance, developers and users will have access to virtual machines with GPUs. It’s like putting a PC in the cloud. More properly it is like putting your PC in the cloud. I think this has great disruptive potential. And that means we’ll see similar services coming soon from other cloud providers.
Autodesk must think it has potential, too, because they’ll be offering several applications on the new platform, […]
A reader pointed out to me this week that the personal computer is well over 30 years old — a number that has real consequence if you are familiar with my work. He remembered I predicted in 1992 that PCs as we knew them would be dead by now. I was obviously a little off in my timing. But only a little off. PCs are still doomed and their end will come quicker than you think.
If 2010 was the year of cloud computing that means 2011 is the year we’ll actually start using it in earnest. That further means 2011 will be the year that cloud computing lets us down. Everything in IT fails eventually, though the big myth is that won’t happen with cloud computing. Hogwash.
