Computation

The most common resource is computing cycles provided by the processors of the machines on the grid. The processors can vary in speed, architecture, software platform, and other associated factors, such as memory, storage, and connectivity.

There are three primary ways to exploit the computation resources of a grid.

1. The first and simplest is to use it to run an existing application on an available machine on the grid rather than locally.
2. The second is to use an application designed to split its work in such a way that the separate parts can execute in parallel on different processors.
3. The third is to run an application, that needs to be executed many times, on many different machines in the grid.

Scalability is a measure of how efficiently the multiple processors on a grid are used. If twice as many processors makes an application complete in one half the time, then it is said to be perfectly scalable. However, there may be limits to scalability when applications can only be split into a limited number of separately running parts or if those parts experience some other interdependencies such as contention for resources of some kind.