Oracle yesterday announced the result of a joint venture with strategic partners to validate and extend its to grid computing vision with best-practice standards.

The database giant has joined forces with Dell, Intel and EMC, using a combination of their core technologies, to prove that enterprise grid computing through the management of large-scale, distributed 128-node server clusters, can be a reality for modern enterprises.

Dell founder and chief executive Michael Dell unveiled 'Project MegaGrid' as he addressed delegates at Oracle's OpenWorld user conference.

'There has been a huge move from Risc and Unix-based servers towards open-standard servers,' Dell said. 'x86 is the only architecture platform that can supply a grid-based solution at a good cost.'

The MegaGrid project aims to demonstrate how a grid deployment - enabling the dynamic allocation of computing resources and workloads across low-cost, high-destiny x86-based server clusters - can compete with traditional datacentre deployments on price and performance.

Dell said enterprises are 'going to be able to build more powerful and scalable solutions' using the MegaGrid as a template, and stressed that standards-based technologies from the project's partners would be key.

This initial phase is focused on embedding industry-standard based best practices for the design, testing and management of grid infrastructures through the production of white papers, shared knowledge bases and demonstrations.

Oracle anticipates these resulting MegaGrid materials will be used to form some of the content of the 'Architecture of the Future' educational programme and international roadshow it announced at the same OpenWorld event earlier this week.

Like the MegaGrid itself, the programme aims to demonstrate ways to capitalise on the latest IT trends, such as high-performance 64-bit processing capabilities in a grid-enabled, Linux-based environment.

MegaGrid is made up of Intel's dual Xeon and four-way Itanium processor-based PowerEdge servers and network technologies supplied by Dell; network-attached storage and management software from EMC, and the complete portfolio of Oracle's current 10g technology infrastructure projects.