Slashdot Mirror
Introduction to Distributed Computing
dosten writes "ExtremeTech has a nice intro article on distributed and grid computing." Someday someone will successfully implement something like Progeny's NOW and all of these assorted hacks at building a distributed computing system will be superseded.
Is that for most intents and purposes, processor cycles are free.
If a company/organization has an *actual* need for processor cycles (say genome research), it's cheaper to buy 1000 boxes and admin the stuff in-house. Even when ignoring issues such as sending valuable company data to thousands of internet users, most applications that require large compuation also require large amounts of bandwidth, generally provided over a LAN.
This is why you'll never get to render a frame for Toy Story 5: Pixar will need to send you 5GB of data just to get back a 2k image.
Once you consider the costs of admining a network, writing/distributing your code, against having a tangible financial benefit from the results, few companies will have a reason to turn to outsiders for a few minutes on their machines.
While the principle is simple, the idea itself is massively overrated these days. It's not that distributed computing is exactly a new idea. Parallel massively machines are around for decades. And distributed computing is just using computers on a (large scale) network as a massively parallel machine. But history has already shown that many problems can't be solved by parallel computations therefore limiting the power of distributed computing. The only new benefit is that you don't need spend $$$ on cray systems etc. Just buy some processing power in a grid. However there won't be as much customers as you would expect.
This stuff is just overhyped by some companies which think that they can make the big buck.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.