ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to help data center managers to compare the characteristics of cooperative processing with those of distributed client/server computing and to identify the applications and hardware environments that work best with the solutions. Client/server computing and its cooperative processing variant are the two most important technologies for realizing the potential benefits of downsizing and distributed computing. Distributed client/server computing distributes the processing workload somewhat more efficiently than does cooperative processing. These distributed computing topologies can provide superior performance at a lower price than traditional host-based solutions. In a cooperative processing application, the software running on the host and the software running on the microcomputer are two pieces of one integrated system. If the computation engine resides on the microcomputer, as is the case in most distributed client/server applications, a lot more bandwidth is needed to get all the data to the workstation quickly.
