Can 2 iMacs become one single iMac through a Thunderbolt cable?

[From Cape Town]

Don't just mean by display but also by processing, memory and HD sharing.

Something similar to running 2 Processors in a Mac Pro.

This will allow you to have 2 X 27' Cinema Displays with a lot of processing power & memory while controlling it all as a sigle unit. 1 keyboard, 1 mouse, 1 trackpad.

 

[osiris24x]

As far as I know, this isn't yet possible. It seems quite feasible that Apple may eventually integrate XGrid computing into Thunderbolt, however. For now, Thunderbolt is only used for storage and displays. The next iteration of Thunderbolt will have much higher bandwidth, so maybe then?

 

[From Cape Town]

No other way of doing it?
Was thinking of rather getting an additional new iMac (when released) than getting just a Display that does not fit next to the current iMac. Seems that inclusions like USB3 will make a hell of a difference pertaining to external storage devices.

 

[theSeb]

No other way of doing it?

Not right now, no. There are some applications that allow you to use your spare computers on the network as nodes for processing, but that has nothing to do with Thunderbolt.

 

[old-wiz]

It requires special software to do this kind of thing. The applications that run have to be specially written for it as well.

 

[leman]

Don't just mean by display but also by processing, memory and HD sharing.

Something similar to running 2 Processors in a Mac Pro.

This will allow you to have 2 X 27' Cinema Displays with a lot of processing power & memory while controlling it all as a sigle unit. 1 keyboard, 1 mouse, 1 trackpad.

This is very difficult and won't be even remotely as useful as you think, that's why nobody bothers to implement this. Basically, what you suggest is to use TB as an interconnect bridge between two CPUs. While Thunderbolt is fast, it does not even approach the requirements for a task like that.

A more practical thing is to split heavy workloads between different computers (w.g. while computer A performs a half of a long task, the computer B performs the other half, and you combine them afterwards). This is what XGrid does.

 

[old-wiz]

This is very difficult and won't be even remotely as useful as you think, that's why nobody bothers to implement this. Basically, what you suggest is to use TB as an interconnect bridge between two CPUs. While Thunderbolt is fast, it does not even approach the requirements for a task like that.

A more practical thing is to split heavy workloads between different computers (w.g. while computer A performs a half of a long task, the computer B performs the other half, and you combine them afterwards). This is what XGrid does.

Before I retired, I did some work in distributed computing, and while it can work wonders, it requires the right hardware and software and especially fast links between systems. The only time it makes sense is when you have really big needs.