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Distributed Computing Overview

Posted by Hemos on from the good-information-to-know dept.

Fruitiger writes: "Well, P2P / distributed computing is all the rage these days, so if you want a good breakdown of who's doing what when, check out this article at Network World Fusion. Focuses on Porivo Technologies and provides some glimpses of what's to come in the future. An interesting appetizer before Intel's P2P Working Group meeting later this week."

28 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. How many are interested though? by Pru · · Score: 2

    Seti has lost a lot of its appeal even to geeks. How well would a non appeal project get users?

    1. Re:How many are interested though? by bsletten · · Score: 2

      Well, we're going to pay people for the use of their computers, but we're also tackling problems with wider appeal like with our Compute Against Cancer campaign.

      See http://www.parabon.com for more info.

  2. P2P worked for me! by Evernight · · Score: 5
    I'm getting me one of those P2P Girlfriends and I don't are what any of you think.

    Neu

  3. Trust by Gefiltefish · · Score: 2

    This peer-to-peer networking concept is good, but there seems to be an issue of trust in play.

    It's like when you share a bathroom with someone. Generally it's ok to share a toilet, sink, and the same roll of toilet paper (as long as users aren't there at the same time). But you don't want to share your bathroom with some stinky loser. It might lead to your comfortable room with the reading stool looking like a public restroom.

  4. this could be interesting by unformed · · Score: 3

    regarding the market...

    The concept of sign up for our ISP and get a "free" computer was wildly popular...How about, run our software and get a free computer?

    This has MANY advantages, including:
    1) It really is free, you don't have to pay for the ISP service (which was more like financing)
    2) Parents can get computers just for their kids, and while the kids are in school/asleep the computers can be running various routines and be paying themselves off

    In turn, this would help increase the number of people with computers, as poor people wouldn't have to pay for the computer, just not use it all the time...and also in turn, it would increase computer literacy...

    I'm also sure geeks/gamers would love this oppurtunity, since its a way to get a powerhouse computer(/computers?) free (or at least relatively cheap)

    and that's only the beginning....

    I'd like to see how this turns out, and how it gets used/abused...
    --------------

    1. Re:this could be interesting by tringstad · · Score: 2

      No offense, but how could this possibly be a good idea?

      Buy a computer for someone else to use, so that you can have some part time cycles VS buying a computer for yourself and setting on your local network where you can have the cycles always?

      -Tommy

      --
      "I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
    2. Re:this could be interesting by Elvis+Maximus · · Score: 2

      Well, there are non-capital costs with running these machines. Electricity for one, a physical place for the machine another, and keeping the thing running.

      It's a bit of a stretch, sure, but it's conceivable that the cost-benefit could work out for somebody.

      -

      --

      -
      Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.

    3. Re:this could be interesting by _xeno_ · · Score: 2
      I'm using right now about 5% of my CPU cycles. I am currently running Apache, the Cyclone IRC daemon, identd, atd, OpenSSH server, lpd, crond, XFree86 4.0.1, XFS, six virtual terms, all the various Gnome programs, Netscape, GAIM, and X-Chat.

      And I'm using about 5% of the CPU. Right now, I could be doing something actually useful - but I'm not. If I start the distrubted.net client, I then start using ALL my CPU.

      The bottom line is, since my computer is basically being used as a development platform (httpd is for some web dev stuff, the ircd is just me playing around with stuff), I'm not actually using too much CPU time. If it were a desktop, I'd probably being using less CPU time (well, not really - most of the processes right now are sleeping, waiting for I/O.) I'm not using too much processing power. Any modern OS is capable of multiprocessing - some better than others. Because of this, I can happily type away this message while the dnet client runs happily in the background.

      If I give a family a PC, and say "here - you get a free PC, a free Internet connection, and all you have to do is keep it on all the time" who wouldn't like the deal? They're paying for electricity - depending on how the networking's done, they aren't paying for anything else. And since the PC is doing actual work, they needn't be bothered by ads. Sounds like a nice setup to me.

      As long as the distributed client didn't eat too many CPU cylces, they wouldn't notice - and probably, wouldn't care. The only time I ever find the need to go and kill all unneeded processes is when I want to play CPU intensive games. For someone who wants to do word processing and surf the web, that'd be a very nice deal.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    4. Re:this could be interesting by jekk · · Score: 2
      Because not ONLY do you (the company offering the free computer) get to keep some of the cycles, but you ALSO get to have YOUR computer in somebody's home. You can do all of the things that free pc companies do now, like giving them your own browser that tracks where they go (then sell the info) or showing them ads. And on top of that you get the massive amount of goodwill deserved for giving them a free computer. Of course this is all counterbalenced by the massive amount of bad will from those who don't think your tech support is good enough...

      -- Michael Chermside

  5. How do they figure... by photozz · · Score: 4

    Instead of purchasing more hardware and software and hiring the IT staff needed to set up and support it, an emerging technology called peer-to-peer (P2P) computing will let users access valuable resources when they aren't being used.

    Pardon me, but how do they figure P2P will implement itself? Any new tech needs a human being to set it up, maintain it, format the results and queries and explain the whole thing to the boss. This tech will save money with companies by allowing them to get more computing power for less cash, but the up-keep and back end is still needed. Maybe the figure this will be a nice little project for all those lazy IT folks just lounging around doing nothing...I'm certain the SETI thing isn't running itself......
    Porivo's Peer client, which resides on a user's desktop, works with the company's PeerPlane management software, which can reside on a dedicated server.
    Great, we all have an extra dedicated server laying around..



    --


    Dirty Pirate Hooker
    1. Re:How do they figure... by photozz · · Score: 2

      I'm not saying all this is not a viable concept, I actualy love the idea, but managers shoulden't go into this thinking this will save them loads of money or resources.......

      --


      Dirty Pirate Hooker
  6. They use Java! by cperciva · · Score: 2

    Well, I guess that is one solution to the processors-are-faster-than-the-network problem: Slow the processors down. Seriously, the hole point of distributed computing is to be able to solve large problems quickly. Having a thousand computers running your code doesn't help you when they are running everything inside a Java sandbox -- it will end up slower than a single computer running a C implementation of the code.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
    1. Re:They use Java! by ericski · · Score: 2

      Nope, sorry. One of the points is to solve it quickly. Another is to be able to solve them at all. Distributed computing can give you access to more memory than you'll ever be able to get on a single platform. Plus, got some more bad news, a thousand PC's running Java (even inside a sandbox) will be able to solve problems that a single processor C program won't ever be able to touch.

    2. Re:They use Java! by joshv · · Score: 3

      Nope, they can code some native methods to do things like fourier transforms and floating point intensive stuff. They make these native methods part of their SDK.

      They can then port their SDK to different platforms and the java plugins will work fine anywhere and execute much closer to native speed.

      Plus-wich if you buy all the hype regarding JITs, java isn't taking all that much of a performance hit over native code anyway.

      -josh

    3. Re:They use Java! by DoublePlusGood · · Score: 3

      There are three reasons we use Java: One, security. Can't have untrusted C++ programs barfing on people's computers or otherwise stealing or breaking things. Two, platform independence. Send the bytecode anywhere, it runs. Three, speed. Believe it or not, the benchmarks I have done with some integer algorithms are FASTER with the IBM 1.3 JVM than the equivalent C code. By like a factor of 3:2. Really. No, REALLY. The reason for this is quite simple. The JIT compilers have become sophisticated enough that they can do dynamic runtime compilation that takes profiling information into account. No statically-compiled code can hope to match this performance. This sort of thing is only going to get better and better in the very near future, especially where heavy-duty scientific floating-point computation is concerned. Less than a year ago, I would have choked up a lung if you told me I would utter (uh, type) these words. But here I am. We have been running jobs on *many* machines over a few hours which would have taken several CPU-years with the equivalent C program on a single box. FWIW.

    4. Re:They use Java! by joshv · · Score: 2

      I just priced out a laptop with 256Meg of RAM, cheaper than the one I bought last year with 128Meg. RAM is cheap and plentiful, so is disk space - those that realize this prosper (Microsoft et al.) those that don't whine about the good old days and waste time and money 'optimizing' while their competitors take a free ride on the coattails of Moore's law.

      The JVM in windows appears to have an overhead of about 4 meg when I run a simple program, but this may be misleading, as IE might pre-load some of this with whatever components - but still, this won't make a significant dent in the 512Meg laptop I buy next :)

      -josh

    5. Re:They use Java! by Cramer · · Score: 2
      • some integer algorithms are FASTER with the IBM 1.3 JVM than the equivalent C code
      Then either your C code is shit or the compiler you used to compile it is shit. JAVA is interpreted in order to be executed. If that's done inline, like a BASIC tokenizer, then your performance will be an order of magnitude less than the native code built by the worst of the worst compilers. JIT's translate JAVA bytecode to native code which presumablly the native compiler could have generated (with a few exceptions.) The output is on par and in some cases better than natively compiled code -- it is native code at this point. I've seen JIT JAVA code run at 90% of the native C++ code pretty evenly across a few platforms (sun jdk 1.1 and gcc 2.7.2 -- neither is really optimal)

      What you are seeing with your "factor of 3:2" is a JIT vastly superior to your C compiler -- I'm guessing some version of a GNU compiler. Writing blindingly fast C code requires knowledge of the target platform. JIT creates an abstraction that places that knowledge on the VM designers instead of the application designers. This allows sloppy and "stupid" programmers to write surprisingly good applications.

      I have nothing against JAVA as a language. However, I am catagorically anti-interpreted code. BASIC feined in light of C and C++ because interpreted languages give laughable performance, but writing everything in assembly made too many people sick :-) In my opinion, computer programmers should be taught to program first in assembly without a compiler (compile it by hand) and forced to key it in byte by byte. Once you appreciate that level of complexity -- once refered to by a fellow programmer as "moving a mountain with a teaspoon" ["sure it takes awhile, but you have complete control over every bit of the dirt"] -- then they can be introduced to C/C++/JAVA/etc. (There are any number of MCU's that can be used for such things. Programming in RISC ASM isn't that difficult to do.)
  7. Spiffy stuff. by Xzzy · · Score: 2

    This sort of thing is very cool, and rather attractive. While I wager it isn't a drop-in solution that suddenly opens up a nirvana of computing, it *is* something that has been predicted (read about it on Slashdot a ways back, anyways), and would be cool to have come around.

    Not only does this help average joe user (he can sell his CPU time to people who need to compile something), but think of it in a work place.

    Where I work, everyone has a workstation. Problem is, everyone does their CPU-heavy work on a central server. Thus, these workstations are being under utilized. Sun (and a number of people) have this problem addressed halfway.. they have software that queues up tasks, and distributes them to idle CPU's as they free up.

    What if we had a sort of "CPU NFS" in a way that individual instructions are handed off to remote machines, rather than entire jobs?

    Mm, I want.

    Of course, any such idea would be riddled with difficulties (I wager the complications would be like the ones NFS has, only worse), but the idea, again, is attractive.

    Is this something Mojonation could expand to? They mention several times that you 'donate cpu cycles', but it never seems to directly state you can sell build time on your machine.

    I'd like to see that.

    1. Re:Spiffy stuff. by tolldog · · Score: 2

      Distributed computing through transparency has been worked for a while now. I remember reading about a windows client that worked with just about any windows app.
      I personaly use Platform's LSF product to control all of my queueing. I have custom perl scripts sitting arround it, allowing jobs to requeue on certain exits or even to validate that the output of the job is correct before saying that it is done.
      Hook all of this up to a spiffy database to know where things are and were in the queues and you have a semi-decent render management toolkit
      I have also read stuff on distributed fileserving as well, a pvfs system. Interesting ideas on ways to not need a massive system but use smaller, cheaper guys to get the job done.

      --
      -I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
    2. Re:Spiffy stuff. by jcampb12 · · Score: 2

      check out www.mosix.org --for linux only as it is a kernel patch. But it does all those things transparently, and for most cpu intensive programs. I run it on my network with one dual 667 PIII w/ 256MB ram and several pentium workstations w/ 32 or 48MB ram, and it is awesome. You can rip cd's, compile, and gimp filters, all at once on a workstation. Sort of like smp and fork and forget. Pretty efficient, just have fast ethernet. And they are working on network memory and network filesystems to go with the cpu portion. Only problem is that all hosts have to be trusted to execute processes as root, so don't run it on your firewall.

    3. Re:Spiffy stuff. by Xzzy · · Score: 2

      Wow, mod the post I'm replying to up. :)

      Soon as I get two spare linux machines at work, I'm gonna tear them apart and try this Mosix stuff.. see if it can function in a software development environment.

      Be neat to see if it works well enough that there's a net gain in efficiency.

      Best part, it's free (which modern solutions aren't), so it's much easier to play with this sort of idea.

  8. I got your glispe of the future right here... by glowingspleen · · Score: 3

    You can read that article for a glimpse of the future of Distributed Computiing, or you could just save time and ask me.

    ------------
    "John, what is the future of Distributed computing?"

    I'm glad you asked. Coming up soon is three more business schemes and companies who will take applications for future testing and promise you to make $$Big Bucks$$ for using your spare CPU cycles. The companies will then stop updating their new page about a month before disappearing all together.

    Next up: Slashdot re-runs an article from June's Issue of Wired! ;)

    --


    ------
    Let me give you the lowdown
    1. Re:I got your glispe of the future right here... by cetan · · Score: 2

      Quick, while they're still reeling, you should Patent their business method!

      --
      In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
  9. obvious by jafac · · Score: 2

    well, since it's now obvious, who's going to patent it?

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  10. Nothing new here by ziegast · · Score: 2

    Back in the day (1991? 92?), batch.uu.net was an expensive Sun 640MP that just couldn't cut it. Pushing USENET through the box was hard enough. Compressing batches of news articles for dialup customers was more than it could handle. Instead of buying more hardware, our fearless leader came up with the idea of using all of the idle machines in the office at night (Sparc SLC/ELC/SS1/SS2) to run compress on them through rsh pipes.

    Moral - a good sysadmin in your hand is worth two P2P sales reps in the bush.

    For the most free computing power at your fingertips, hire script kiddies.

  11. This sounds familiar... by segfaultcoredump · · Score: 2

    Didn't sun just release the Sun Grid Engine just the other week? It does the same thing, run distributed compute intensive jobs on idle systems. Of course, you can download the stuff now... no need to wait, and they promise that they will release it under an open source license in the near future.

  12. Microsoft announces P2P software by slickwillie · · Score: 4

    Microsoft announced today that it will release a Windows version of P2P software "soon, in fact before any of those other companies can do it. If it looks like one of them will beat us, we'll buy them anyway, so you should wait for ours." The first release will run only on Window ME, and will most likely be named "P-On-ME".

    It was also revealed today that the first virus for P-On-ME has been discovered. It is contained in email messages with the subject line "Do Not Open - Virus Inside".

  13. Sun has already released theirs by /tmp · · Score: 2

    I believe Sun already released a distributed resource package called "Sun Gridware"
    http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/
    looks like it is available for download already and the page says the code is slated to be released under an "industry-accepted open source license" I know that phrase will probably raise a few hackles but its better than what you'll get from most companies.