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Gridwars Parallel Programming Challenge

Posted by timothy on from the your-base-all-ours dept.

Peter_Pork writes "New Scientist has an article about GridWars, a challenging new game that runs on large clusters of computers. Programs fight each other for supremacy in terms of the number of processors they control, and the main point of the contest is to develop better parallel algorithms. It seems a nice idea: have fun while you improve the state-of-the-art in cluster computing. The result of the last contest was somewhat of an upset, since a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA."

3 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Everything old is new again. by Mordant · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anyone remember Core Wars?

  2. Close but not quite by loadquo · · Score: 4, Informative
    since a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA.

    It should not read like that it should be.

    since a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated program created by a genetic algorithm from NASA.

    See (from NS):
    "The final battle saw Wenig's program - created using genetic algorithms - take on a program designed by a computing student from Moscow State University."

    A subtle, but important difference. Now if the prgrams were actually evolving in the Gridwars game that would be interesting, as it would be similar(ish) to my project.

    *Dreams of a day they put an edit queue on slashdot*

  3. Re:Pens versus Pencils by Q+Who · · Score: 5, Informative

    NASA decided that the astronauts needed a writing utensil to take notes during space missions. NASA spend a large amount of money to develop the zero G ballpoint pen.

    This is an urban legend.