Apologies for hijacking this list, I thought some of you may be interested in this! :-)
I've just announced a new open source data grid project - Infinispan.
http://infinispan.blogspot.com/2009/04/infinispan-start-of-new-era-in-open.html
Why is Infinispan sexy?
1. Massive heap - with consistent-hash based distribution, and a configurable amount of data redundancy, the collective memory of all nodes in a grid is exposed and addressable via a single data structure.
2. Extreme scalability - communications are based on peer-to-peer design, where nodes speak directly to one another. No single point of failure or bottleneck.
3. Very fast and lightweight core - using state of the art lock-free and synchronization-free algorithms and data structures wherever possible. Lighting fast even for LOCAL mode as a result!
4. Not Just for Java (PHP, Python, Ruby, C, etc.) - on the roadmap is a server module that speaks the memcached protocol. As such, in addition to being a distributed drop-in replacement for memached, we also leverage memcached's plethora of client libraries.
In addition to announcing the project, our second alpha is now available for download along with a nifty GUI demo:
Give it a whirl, I'd love to hear your feedback!
Cheers
--
Manik Surtani
Lead, Infinispan
Lead, JBoss Cache