So.<p>It&#x27;s easy to dismiss this: the fallacies of network programming, etc etc.<p>But something happened in the last 10 years many people haven&#x27;t really thought through: the network became faster than (most spinning) disks. Reading 1 MB from a spinning disk is roughly slow as reading 1 MB from the network in the same data center.<p>That makes you consider exactly what a &quot;computer&quot; is. A &quot;supercomputer&quot; is little more than multiple traditional computers with very heavily optimized network interconnects. But now everyone&#x27;s internet connects are just as fast, why should we consider a cluster of computers any different?<p>Yes, SSDs change this (especially M2!). But view the SSD -&gt; Network relationship as we used to view the RAM -&gt; Disk relationship.<p>I think it&#x27;s worth rethinking some of the traditional boundaries of what &quot;a computer&quot; is.