Distributed Computing "Advances" 160
Quirk writes "NewScientist is reporting on..."Software to be launched in January will let PC users run as many "distributed computing" projects as they like. The program will let PC users search for aliens, help predict climate change and perform advanced biological research - all at the same time."'It is called the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). BOINC acts like a software platform that can run a number of screen-saver style applications on top of the PC's own operating system.'"
pretty sweet (Score:3, Informative)
Good news for standards (Score:5, Informative)
Re:pretty sweet (Score:5, Informative)
Stuff to read again... (Score:5, Informative)
My Primer on building a distributed computing project. [bacchae.co.uk]
(It still needs updating.)
seti@home wasnt the first distributed process (Score:5, Informative)
qoute "The first and easily the best known is SETI@home, which since 1999 has enlisted half a million people to analyse data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, looking for signs of alien life. [newscientist.com]"
I believe distributed.net's [distributed.net] client was the first program of its type to download information from a remote server, use idle cpu cycles to calculate whatever, then resubmit it back to the central server. I ran distributed.net back in 98, more then a year before seti came out.
Re:Who is Benefiting? (Score:5, Informative)
"Who "owns" the results? What will happen to them?
Unlike other distributed computing projects, Folding@home is run by an academic institution (specifically the Pande Group, at Stanford University's Chemistry Department), which is a nonprofit institution dedicated to science research and education. We will not sell the data or make any money off of it.
Moreover, we will make the data available for others to use. In particular, the results from Folding@home will be made available on several levels. Most importantly, analysis of the simulations will be submitted to scientific journals for publication, and these journal articles will be posted on the web page after publication. Next, after publication of these scientific articles which analyze the data, the raw data of the folding runs will be available for everyone, including other researchers, here on this web site."
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/foldin
Didn't see anyone else post this yet... (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't see it in the story either. Pardon me please if I'm just blind/illiterate
Re:seti@home wasnt the first distributed process (Score:2, Informative)
They were way off on the user stats by nearly an order of magnitude. The statistics [berkeley.edu] page shows over 4,800,000 users.
Re:Wont we get this in longhorn with... (Score:2, Informative)
Well, in fairness to NUMA it allows a shared memory pool and single system image. These fancy SGI Linux machines with loads of CPUs running a single system image wouldn't exist without NUMA.
NUMA memory may be slower than RAM but it's far faster for interprocessor communications and shared RAM than is a beowulf cluster (which doesn't do shared RAM afaik)
Re:seti@home wasnt the first distributed process (Score:2, Informative)
SETI@home source is available. (Score:5, Informative)
The SETI@home (under boinc) source code [berkeley.edu] is available under the GPL. The AstroPulse code should be available shortly. Yes, now you can see how bad my code really is.
What you won't get with the code is our code signing key (which is under lock and key on an isolated machine) or the ability to distribe your version from our servers, but you are welcome to compile versions for use on your machines and/or distribute your own versions. We won't guarantee to anyone that your version doesn't erase harddrives or distribute child porn, though.
Re:graphics and Boinc (Score:3, Informative)
Some people have expressed interest in getting BOINC to do that. It may happen.
Re:What about licensing? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Overuse of "quotation marks" (Score:2, Informative)
Yes. Quotation marks, in case you missed it, are for demarcating *quotations*, much as I have done above. To use them otherwise, regardless of what limitations the medium might have, really only serves to show that you probably haven't been paying attention.
If you think that there are no viable alternatives for emphasis than overloading the use of such a well-defined and widely-used punctutation mark, I suggest you simply go without. Good writing doesn't need emphasis markup anyway: I suspect that you'll find no bold typefaces in the nearest novel or newspaper to hand, nor quotations used for emphasis. (Unless you have one of the perticularly trashy examples of these media.)
http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/quotation.
http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/#current
Re:What about licensing? (Score:2, Informative)
HOWEVER, this non-commercial clause is to be in effect for 18 months or until the collapse of United Devices, at which point the code becomes real Open Source.
Re:seti@home wasnt the first distributed process (Score:3, Informative)
Seti came well over a year later.
For d.net, at least, our first assigned block was in early March 1997.
http://www.distributed.net/history.html.en