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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."

7 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. 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

  2. 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...
    --------------

  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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

  6. 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.

  7. 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".