Grid Computing Coming Of Age

ravenousbugblatter writes "The New York Times online has an article discussing grid computing and recent advances made by Dr. Ian Foster, among others. The article compares the state of grid computing over the internet to where the internet was in 1994, which was soon after the development of the software for the use of URL's, HTML, and HTTP. Predictions are made in the article that in the near future the massive power of grid computing will be available to anyone with an internet connection, not just to big companies that can afford to hire HP and Sun to run a grid project for them."

Comments

GNAA NOTES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

TO: Gay Niggers of America
RE: Rob Malda's Interest In GNAA
REPLY-TO: GNAA@hotmail.com
SUBJ: RFC!!!

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Questions or comments? Please post them here on
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Re:GNAA NOTES!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

To join the GNAA, you only have to be gay, OR a nigger. You don't have to be both. I would like to know, if the requirements are the same in the GWAA. Would I, as a heterosexual wigger, be able to join? And what about wangstas? Would they be given the same rights as wiggers? Would dual membership between the GNAA and GWAA be possible under any circumstances? These, and other questions urgently need to be addressed.

BUSH = FAGNASTY

[Anonymous Coward]

36 Americans dead in Iraq, and counting.

Bring 'em on!

Re:BUSH = FAGNASTY

[mobileskimo]

I'd have to remind you that statistically, 36 is a very small number for a strategist. Any military leader would consider it minimal acceptable losses.

That comes from the cold side of me. The half that occupies my heart says that while I agree with you that it is a tragedy, your trolling is amatuer and smallish. Reminding people of the circumstances and results of war does nothing to make anyone's grief easier and places no strain on the leaders that make such horrible decisions. Your words are better spent lobbying and writing for your congressman. Not on Slashdot with offtopic agendas.

It's rather disconcerting to see someone with good intent waste it on such obviously poor application and execution. Atleast when I'm off-topic, I try to elicit a discussion. But I do so love flamebaite. It taste so good in the morning.

could it be?

[rynthetyn]

First post?

Interesting article, though not terribly informative.

Re:could it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

U fail it!

Re:could it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up!

yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

this makes sense

GNNA CAN EAT A DICK

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off! Stupid geek assholes. You are neither black, nor gay. Die. Die. Die.

gnaa FAILS IT

[Anonymous Coward]

Una comedia misógina de ciencia ficción: extraterrestres de una civilización de otra galaxia llegan a la Tierra y descubren que nuestro planeta está infestado de mujeres, por lo cuál proceden al exterminio de las mismas.

__________________________ ___________d8b________d8,
____________________d8P___ ___________?88_______`8P____d8P
_________________d888888P_ ____________88b__________d888888P
_d8888b_d888b8b____?88'___ ___.d888b,__888888b___88b__?88'
d8b_,dPd8P'_?88____88P____ ___?8b,_____88P_`?8b__88P__88P
88b____88b__,88b___88b____ _____`?8b__d88___88P_d88___88b
`?888P'`?88P'`88b__`?8b___ __`?888P'_d88'___88bd88'___`?8b

_d888b8b____88bd88b__d888b8b___d888b8b
d8P'_?88____88P'_?8bd8P'_?88__d8P'_?88
88b__,88b__d88___88P88b__,88b_88b__,88b
`?88P'`88bd88'___88b`?88P'`88b`?88P'`88b
_______)88
______,88P
__`?8888P

This short black and white comedy begins over a peaceful starfield as a narrator who sounds strung out on Qualudes babbles on about a universe where men can "express" themselves, all possible because someone loves us and watches over us "as we play" (?). Of course, it's implied that the ones watching over the galaxy are "the gay niggers from outer space" (the narrator's voice quivers as he lingers on every syllable of this title). The scene shifts to the deck of the Ring Musculatoris #2, where brave leader Captain B. Dick investigates this new "Earth," a world infested with icky females. The narrator informs us that the Gay Niggers come from the planet Anus where they have been able to create a male-only way of living, " a perfect society" he eerily intones. For some reason, being a black homosexual alien also involves dressing up like a member of Parliament Funkadelic but this small detail is never fully explained. The crew beams the young gay Cadet Arminaus down to the planet, and after a brief exchange with a woman the frightened alien vaporizes her with his death ray. This elite group of interstellar gays make quick work of Earth, moving from continent to continent and exterminating anything with a menstrual cycle. In Asia they blast a bunch of horrible young women torturing a poor little geek, who joyfully embraces the black alien after being freed from his bondage. Sensing that victory is in their grasp, the entire crew fists a mystical brown ring to find out which one of them will be left on earth as the new gay ambassador, who will be transformed into a white dorky-looking fellow (?????) to lead the planet into it's new gay future. The short ends with a brief colorized pool scene where the transformed inhabitants of Earth take a stand "for a gay universe!" The offensive title combined with strange imagery and wacky alternative lifestyle humor makes Gay Niggers... an instant underground classic that's definitely superior to most of the dreck that passes for American short cinema. The guys who made this (Danish filmmaker and comedian Morton Lindberg) were obviously going for the jugular and they succeded, right to the anti-social extremes of comedy. Definitely a must for that boring sweet sixteen party or hospital visits for hernia surgery.

Grid2003

[grennis]

Why settle for just reading articles when you can attend the Grid2003 workshop in Phoenix this November?

Its the 4th one, and getting better every year.

FRIST PSOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Mutherfocker!!!!!

Could the powers-that-be...

[MoThugz]

please consider setting up Grid Computing section! ...so that I can finally filter it!

Thanks in advance.

Slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

Snap to Grid2003! We Rule!

Imagine a....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea I know but if these stories keep coming I don't think I can contain myself.

Registration Free

[Anonymous Coward]

The article from NYTimes requires (free) registration.

Here is the registration free URL

Please use news.google.com for finding article links.

Re:Registration Free

[Anonymous Coward]

regarding the fact it's a NY Times article, i was surprised to not see the words "Blah blah" somewhere in the original post! lol

As a coder...

[Valar]

As a coder who works with things like md5 cracking programs (like the thingy in my sig) and various assundry other programs, I can honestly say: the crackers do NOT need any more processing power!

Re:As a coder...

[quinkin]

If you can crack a 2k keyed encryption stream using a well regarded encryption scheme (not a simple hash like MD5), then I am impressed.

If all you can do is "to see if the original cleartext is a word found in a given dictionary file" then get a life.

Wow, how revolutionary, and so suited to distributed computing (NOT).

When you have access to REAL computing power, you realise exactly what the government can do with your static keyed vpn connection and PGP (hehe) emails.

Q.

Re:As a coder...

[skookum]

"various assundry" indeed.

"various and sundry" is what you meant, I think.

Re:As a coder...

[Anonymous Coward]

and they've been doing it for years...

Re:As a coder...

[Valar]

It's a good thing you didn't bother to actually read any farther than that. The advantage of parasite is that is uses automated code generation and a linked list matrix to make the search fast. i.e. Search a million word dictionary in much, much less than a second. And it is, very, very suited to distributed computing. The same technique could easily be altered to sort the dictionary over multiple systems (in fact, we're already testing it to do so). I've worked with VPN keys, and with WEP (yes, yes it is pathetic) and PGP, well, that goes without saying. Yes, hashing techniques are fairly weak. But the point is people use them. One time pads are unbreakable if people maintain proper key security. But people don't use one time pads and other related methods, because they are logistical nightmares (the same nightmare, really, that makes WEP so weak). Why should I spend my time writing audit tools for PAM modules that don't exist?

Re:As a coder...

[quinkin]

Well, I did actually read further than that - and to be honest it ain't impressive.

Automated code generation? Wow...

Linked list matrix? My goodness...

"The same technique could easily be altered to sort the dictionary over multiple systems." and "Search a million word dictionary in much, much less than a second." Mmmm, you need to decide which of the previous statements is most correct - in that the time to transmit a dictionary "fragment" is either greater, smaller or the same as the time to process the dictionary fragment on a single node. Or are you relying on pre-creation of the distributed dictionary fragments (sounds ominously similar to the onerous logistical dependencies you so aptly point out).

Don't get me wrong Robert (I assume it is you), I'm not trying to flame-bait, but I do not like grandious claims of the horrendous oversupply of computing power afflicting the world. What a load of crap and you know it.

While you are at it you may as well address the issue of how will the hacking groups pay for this grid computing power? You don't think it is going to be given away for commercial vendors do you?? At best it would be a processing bank (something I would love) style situation. The volunteer grid group option is already available (as you should be aware creating your own) so no effect their either.

WEP is crap, hash is (mostly) weak - no argument here. :)

On a personal note, I think it is an excellent project in that it (partly) deals with the exact issue that I wished to highlight - the human factor. Current estimates are that by far the majority of systems are compromised by social means, not brute computing power. This appears to be an issue that your tool will partly address in the most obvious of cases.

"Why should I spend my time writing audit tools for PAM modules that don't exist?" Ummm, that is a good question, but perhaps one that you should be answering...

Q.

Wow!

[pheared]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Wow! Imagine your karma going down!

FILTER MY GNAA MEMBERED ASS

[Anonymous Coward]

())====D

That is too many fucking special characters, bitch.

Seti@Home

[berkeleyjunk]

Been there. Done that. Nothing more to prove.

Re:Seti@Home

[quinkin]

Time to put on your Nike sneakers and ascend to the comet...

Q.

Re:Seti@Home

[Bert690]

The computation performed by Seti@Home is what Grid researchers refer to as an "embarassingly parallel".

Among many other things, Grid folks hope to solve problems that aren't quite so amenable to divide-and-conquer. But then they had to go base their protocols on the bloated Web services stack, implying a relatively high granularity per compute unit. So we'll see how well that works out!

Re:Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, my god...least insightful post, ever. Do you have any idea what grid computing applications are? I've actually met Ian Foster, as I did some work on Globus for a semester. They're talking about moving around petabytes of data for analysis and storage. You have no idea the complexity of these issues. For instance, there's a program called the Digital Sky Survey...i'm not going to bother looking for links because right now I'm using my trolling account and I don't feel like logging in as my "serious" persona and I don't care about karma. Anyway, massive telescopes around the world pan every miliarcsecond of the sky, record their images, and then put them in the survey for view by researchers all over the world. Each image of each fraction of an arcsecond of the sky takes up megabytes. Combined, the map of the sky is petabytes in size. That's 10^15, bucko. You try just storing that data, let alone analyzing it, searching it, and recalling it, using fucking seti@home style tech.

There were several other applications under development...I remember a paricle collider of some kind that produced some obscene amount of data for each event. Something like a terabyte milisecond or something, and it was almost impossible just to gather the data...again, let alone store, analyze, and recall.

Seti@home? I scoff. I hope you choke on your ignorance.

Re:Seti@Home

[berkeleyjunk]

Do you know what is the difference between evolution and revolution? My first hard disk could store 20MB of data. My new one does 250GB. That does not mean anything new has happened. Just because you throw up a large number (10^15 , should actually be 2^50 ) does not mean that anything new is being ivented here. You can have your views, I can have mine. I never called you ignorant ( though you are). Be civil.

Re:Seti@Home

[jonfelder]

Trolling account? If you didn't care about karma you would not have posted as anonymous coward.

I can't believe you're too chicken to flame without your "real" account. The fact that you can't do it with your trolling account either is just pathetic.

Re:Seti@Home

[UnknowingFool]

SETI@Home is more of an example of massive parallel computing. Some people call it grid computing. I don't know what the exact definition, technical defintion of grid computing, but what the article describes a much more intensive and interactive environment than SETI@Home is. With SETI@Home, the work is divided into small chunks for each computer to perform and reply when completed. Each chunk is not dependent on another chunk for completion.

If you are modeling weather and divided your target regions into small sectors, the variables in one sector does affect the next. As calculations are made, they need to be stored and shared with all computers in the grid if they need it. That's alot more problematic.

Distributed Google

[quinkin]

It appears that google is placing themselves firmly in the future of distributed computing (as previously mentioned onslashdot).

Can anyone see another player apart from Microsoft having the market penetration required to make themselves the defacto distributed computing platform??

Go Google I say - let microsoft get someone else to beta test their software.

Q.

Re:Distributed Google

[LiquidCoooled]

Kazaa includes a grid computing client dont they?
Since they are most downloaded program ever (or something) and have themselves firmly tapped into Mr Average Joe's computer I think they are in the best position.

Medication Failure?

[quinkin]

I don't know what planet you come from, but please return there.

Q.

assundry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that one of those Goatsex open source things?

Grid Computing Exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Scan 24.13.0.0 -> 24.32.0.0 for SubSeven infected hosts.

2. Install Script on each host.

3. Execute all Scripts.

4. Watch targeted web site disappear.

*note: at least 10,000 hosts will be needed if the target web site is on Akamai.

Does the average user care?

[chenGOD]

Sure this is great if you're doing simulations or animating/rendering stuff . But for Joe Schmoe who surfs the web and reads his e-mail, what's the big deal? How will this affect network security?

Re:Does the average user care?

[BWJones]

Sure this is great if you're doing simulations or animating/rendering stuff . But for Joe Schmoe who surfs the web and reads his e-mail, what's the big deal? How will this affect network security?

Well, I guess the obvious answer is that this is Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Not News for Joe Schmoe.

Re:Does the average user care?

[BWJones]

Sure this is great if you're doing simulations or animating/rendering stuff . But for Joe Schmoe who surfs the web and reads his e-mail, what's the big deal? How will this affect network security?

Aside from my rather glib answer to the parent post, I should have added that for the average Joe Schmoe surfing the web, grid computing is very important for web-searches, hierarchical analysis of searches and valid links and if the spam load keeps increasing, we will have to have grids just to handle the load of email onslaught. Seriously though, all you have to do is examine any of the search engine companies. Take Google for instance. How do you think they do what they do? Grid computing is the answer.

Re:Does the average user care?

[Homology]

"Grid Computing" is directed at large-scale, secure resource sharing. An ordinary surfer will have little interest in this.

As for security, authentication and authorization are challenging, and you may be pretty sure that Joe Schmoe will not have access to these resources.

The following article gives a nice overview :

http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-55/iss-2/p42.html

Re:Does the average user care?

[chenGOD]

Yeah I know, people who read slashdot aren't Joe Schmoe.

Google runs a pretty big server farm yes, it's true. I'm sure grid computing helps them immensely. I guess my point was, this won't make a public impact on Joe Schmoe.

Also I was serious, how will this affect network security?

Re:Does the average user care?

[Lord_Dweomer]

"But for Joe Schmoe who surfs the web and reads his e-mail, what's the big deal?"

How else will they get the computing power to handle the AI for Clippy in the next version of windows?

"I notice you haven't done anything in a while. Would you like me to:"

-Calculate the meaning of life?
-Cure cancer?
-Run Carnivore and send the answers back to our nations great protectors?

No thanks, I'll pass.

Re:Does the average user care?

[Tommy Boomfiger]

true, for most average uses grid computing isnt reasonable. there is a big group of average users that will benefit from it: GAMERS. 3D games can completely use it. it would take the normal hardware cycle and totally obliterate it. once you implement grid computing into console form you will see the benefit for average users.

Re:Does the average user care?

[sql*kitten]

"Grid Computing" is directed at large-scale, secure resource sharing. An ordinary surfer will have little interest in this.

Yes and no. Consider business models. At present, there are web sites supported by corporations who wish to display advertising. What about a model in which a corporation pays for your ADSL connection, in return for n workunits/day of their distributed computing job run on your PC? More units, faster connection. Remember the average user's processor is idle most of the time, so it wouldn't have a real impact on their own use of their PC. If the job was like folding@home which uses processor but not much bandwidth, the user would get all the benefit of the connection for themselves. This could radically change the domestic bandwidth industry.

Re:Does the average user care?

[Homology]

What about a model in which a corporation pays for your ADSL connection, in return for n workunits/day of their distributed computing job run on your PC?

For this to be useful the corporation needs to be able to download and run programs at will. These programs will have to be different (for different computing needs), perhaps written by corporate customers. Needless to say, this has serious security issues; for the Joe Doe as well as the corporate customer (that wants to verify the integrity of the computations/data).

There do exist similar business models where spyware is using your harddisk/bandwidth as part of a distributed server for ads.

I do not claim that Grid Computing may not be usefull for the ordinary Web surfer. Perhaps some of the technologies developed may by used in various Open Source projects.

Re:Does the average user care?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine playing Quake on something like this!?!?!? That would put it to REAL use ! :)

Re:Does the average user care?

[jonfelder]

I imagine it could affect network security by making it easier for crackers to gain enough computing power to crack encryption schemes.

Re:Does the average user care?

[Shmoe]

I guess I had better leave, huh? :)

Re:Does the average user care?

[BWJones]

I guess I had better leave, huh? :)

I uh.....guess I should have seen that one coming. :-)

Mod Parent Up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the above post be labelled Redundant?

You mean

[djupedal]

...that bastard Scott is right?

The network really is the computer?

Where'd I put that mousepad......

NYT site requires registration, so...

[shigelojoe]

Would anyone who *has* registered care to post the text of the story?

Re:NYT site requires registration, so...

[djupedal]

Teaching Computers to Work in Unison
By STEVE LOHR

Computers do wondrous things, but computer science itself is largely a discipline of step-by-step progress as a steady stream of innovations in hardware, software and networking pile up. It is an engineering science whose frontiers are pushed ahead by people building new tools rendered in silicon and programming code rather than the breathtaking epiphanies and grand unifying theories of mathematics or physics.
Advertisement

Yet computer science does have its revelatory moments, typically when several advances come together to create a new computing experience. One of those memorable episodes took place in December 1995 at a supercomputing conference in San Diego. For three days, a prototype project, called I-Way, linked more than a dozen big computer centers in the United States to work as if a single machine on computationally daunting simulations, like the collision of neutron stars and the movement of cloud patterns around the globe.

There were glitches and bugs. Only about half of the 60 scientific computer simulations over the I-Way worked. But the participants recall those few days as the first glimpse of what many computer scientists now regard as the next big evolutionary step in the development of the Internet, known as grid computing.

"It was the Woodstock of the grid -- everyone not sleeping for three days, running around and engaged in a kind of scientific performance art," said Dr. Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, who was the program chairman for the conference.

The idea of lashing computers together to tackle computing chores for users who tap in as needed -- almost as if a utility -- has been around since the 1960's. But to move the concept of distributed computing utilities, or grids, toward practical reality has taken years of continuous improvement in computer processing speeds, data storage and network capacity. Perhaps the biggest challenge, however, has been to design software able to juggle and link all the computing resources across far-flung sites, and deliver them on demand.

The creation of this basic software -- the DNA of grid computing -- has been led by Dr. Ian Foster, a senior scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory and a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Carl Kesselman, director of the center for grid technologies at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute.

They have worked together for more than a decade and, a year after the San Diego supercomputing conference, they founded the Globus Project to develop grid software. It is supported mainly by the government, with financing from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

There has been a flurry of grid projects in the last few years in the United States, Europe and Japan, most of them collaborations among scientific researchers at national laboratories and universities on projects like climate modeling, high-energy physics, genetic research, earthquake simulations and brain research. More recently, computer companies including IBM, Platform Computing, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have become increasingly interested in grid technology, and some of the early commercial applications include financial risk analysis, oil exploration and drug research.

This month, grid computing moved further toward the commercial mainstream when the Globus Project released new software tools that blend the grid standards with a programming technology called Web services, developed mainly in corporate labs, for automated computer-to-computer communications.

Enthusiasm for grid computing is also broadening among scientists. A report this year by a National Science Foundation panel, "Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure," called for new financing of $1 billion a year to mak

Re:NYT site requires registration, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't take the time to register, but someone else should be bothered to copy and paste (and violate copyright law) so you can read the article?

Everyone here knows that you have to register to read NYT articles. NYT pays reporters to write them as well as staff to put them on line, and they're asking for something of some slight value in return. If you really think that's too time consuming or too great an invasion of your privacy, why not just ignore posts based on NYT articles? Why does every NYT article posted have to degenerate into complaints about the registration requirement?

No one is magically entitled to free articles. NYT is not obligated to provide you valuable content for nothing in return. So, if you don't like the price, exercise your freedom to choose not to read the article. It's just that easy.

Re:NYT site requires registration, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.. the NY times sucks, they are full of lying "journalists" who do nothing but get on the soapbox about their own bullshit political views, and for what?

Re:NYT site requires registration, so...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I'm not going to address the issue of the quality of the content or reporting in the Times, because it was obviously of enough value for the OP to want to read it.

If, for some reason, he or anyone else thinks that the exchange that the Times offers is not a fair one (the content isn't worth a name and e-mail address), he's under no particular obligation to make the trade. And he clearly thinks that the information has at least some value, because he wants to read it.

I have no idea what makes so many people here think that because something exists in an electronic format, they are entitled to have it for free.

Re:NYT site requires registration, so...

[omar.sahal]

Just go to this site http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html save the page to your desktop open up the saved page and click the register and go icon (I remember hereing that NYT.com wised up and blocked traffic from this link) the links is also here

"Woodstock of the grid?" Really?

[Audent]

"It was the Woodstock of the grid -- everyone not sleeping for three days, running around naked and shagging in a kind of scientific performance art," said Dr. Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, who was the program chairman for the conference.

no wonder it took so long to develop.

Whew!

[Nix0n]

At first I read that as "Jan Foster" - you had me worred for a moment there that grid computing was being based based upon the irrational mind of a woman.

The last thing we need is a theory of grid computing written in pink cursive with margin notes such as "OMG Dr. Pournelle was SOOOOO hottt today I almost lost it right there!! OMFG! I'm gonna go to the mall cuz like The Gap is great inspiration for cooperative agent dynamics and stuff!"

I am SO very glad to see "Ian" instead.

Ah, sweet consent...

[Fux the Pengiun]

It's about time grid computing become of age. I've been waiting to hit that for years.

Sincerely,

A dirty old mainframe

Google bigger than whole 1995 Internet .

[Fu Ling-Yu]

We did study on size of infrastructure of Internet for demographic studies and thanks to partners at Stanford, found that Google setup now is bigger than the whole Internet in 1995 in terms of machines and total bandwidths. Grid computing definitely works..

Full article text (you're welcome)

[Anonymous Coward]

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Just a question

[agent dero]

What would be the difference between Grid Computing and then a "psduedo-cluster" networked together with VPN Tunnels?

From the article they seem to be basically the same thing. Or am I wrong?

Re:Just a question

[BiggerIsBetter]

Venture Capital.

Re:Just a question

[trozan_007]

The stuff which makes a "grid" different from a cluster is that the computing and job execution typically spans multiple heterogeneous admin domains.

no more outdated computers

[truthhurts1]

no more upgrades every 3 years !

Read between the hype..

[djmitche]

This is great if you think it's great. Grid computing is a technology without a cause right now. It's preposterous to think that the average joe, or even the average joe company, will have any use for grid computing in the forseeable future. Most of us can't keep our load average above 0.1 (that's 10% for you Windows-users) doing anything useful as it is!

Heck, look back over the grid computing stories we've seen here on /. Whose name keeps popping up?

Re:Read between the hype..

[Anonymous Coward]

My load average is 3 per day, more if Baywatch is on TV.

Re:Read between the hype..

[sn00ker]

You're either trolling, or wearing blinkers.
Grid computing isn't meant to be used for home users. It's meant to be used for computing tasks that would otherwise be run on super computers - Modelling molecular flow patterns and tectonic plate movements, to name but two. The implication that I read was not home users, but mobile users - Scientists and engineers who're out of the office and need an answer fast.
There are companies out there that would love to be able to run computationally intensive modelling, but can't afford the systems they need to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.

Stop thinking in terms of things that you would use it for, and start thinking big but not enormous. There's plenty of stuff out there.

Re:Read between the hype..

[Aliencow]

0.1 is 10% ? Load average is NOT cpu usage.. Hell you could bring it to "300%" if you compiled a few things at the same time..

Re:Read between the hype..

[pavera]

This is a funny post.
I think I remember hearing lots of similar sentiment about the internet in 94-95. "What email? what's that for? who needs it who will ever us that?". "Chat rooms? What a waste of time." (precursor to IM, still arguably a waste of time, but I know it saves the company I work for thousands in phone bills, and many hours in productivity). When people walk out and make claims like this, it is a big sign that what they are claiming is useless is probably the NBT

Re:Read between the hype..

[cranos]

Let me guess, you thought 640k was all anyone would need? Or maybe there would only be a market for 5 computers in the world.

Grid Computing will find its reason, whether its sooner or later who knows, but dismissing it out of hand is short sighted to say the least.

Re:Read between the hype..

[YoJ]

I think grid computing is way overdue. I am not disparaging the current researchers in the field. Resource sharing and management has been with computers from day one (one of the quotes from the talk is from 1969). Ever since I discovered PovRay (it was DKB or something back then) I have been waiting for fast computers available for my use without muss or fuss. I'm still waiting.

Re:Read between the hype..

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty sure you are right, it probably saves the company many many hours in productivity :-)

Re:Read between the hype..

[larien]

Hell, I've seen a load average of over 100 on a single CPU SPARCstation 20. That was painful.

Added to that, different versions of Unix seem to have a different method for calculating load average; HP-UX in particular usually has a higher load average.

Re:Read between the hype..

[aminorex]

What, tail fins? What use are those? Hula hoops? Coon
skin hats? Rocking chairs that operate bellows to cool the
rocker? The PUSH web? Digital cash? Grid computing?
DIVX disks? DataPlay?

Most innovation is crap. A lot of good innovation is
treated like crap.

They laughed at Einstein, yes, but they also laughed
at Bozo the Clown.

Re:Read between the hype..

[Aliencow]

Couldn't that be related to the OS itself and how it queues operations? Not really a load average master here...

AGE MEANS DEATH

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is dying

Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there may be no future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. Camino is perhaps the most endangered. Let's look at the numbers.

Mozilla leader Asa states that there are 7000 users of Mozilla. How many users of Firebird are there? Let's see. The number of Mozilla versus Firebird entries in Bugzilla is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Firebird users. Camino entries in Bugzilla are about half of the volume of Firebird entries. Therefore there are about 700 users of Camino. A recent article put the Mozilla browser at about 80 percent of the Mozilla market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Camino users. This is consistent with the number of Camino bugs.

Due to the troubles of Netscape, abysmal sales and so on, Netscape went out of business and was taken over by AOL who sell another troubled service.

All marketing surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among web hobbyists, dabblers, and dilettantes. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.

IRC hacks are for pussies

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you smell like salted pink pussy?

oh my god...

[jx100]

SKYNET LIVES!!!!

Re:oh my god...

[laughing_badger]

You are not wrong. It has been in orbit for years.

Important info

[Anonymous Coward]

List: linux-kernel
Subject: Linux v2.6.0-test1
From: Linus Torvalds
Date: 2003-07-14 3:59:07
[Download message RAW]

Ok,
the naming should be familiar - it's the same deal as with 2.4.0.

One difference is that while 2.4.0 took about 7 months from the pre1 to
the final release, I hope (and believe) that we have fewer issues facing
us in the current 2.6.0. But very obviously there are going to be a
few test-releases before the real thing.

The point of the test versions is to make more people realize that they
need testing and get some straggling developers realizing that it's too
late to worry about the next big feature. I'm hoping that Linux vendors
will start offering the test kernels as installation alternatives, and
do things like make upgrade internal machines, so that when the real
2.6.0 does happen, we're all set.

Linus

Linux Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree

Re:NYT site requires reg...so let's violate DMCA!

[yelohbird]

Tsk tsk...what a blatant example of a violation of DMCA right here on /. This so misrepresents the law-abiding nature of the /. population ;-)

Wow!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of thes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H...

Userful things to Google for programing

[rf0]

For more info on porgramming for grid computing try MPI or LSF/NQE/PBSPro

Rus

Re:Userful things to Google for programing

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun's Grid Engine is what I'd recommend you look into. Not only is it a great product, it's open source and runs on Linux.

PS3 spreads grid to the masses

[yelohbird]

With the upcoming PS3 carrying out grid computing, there's no stopping for this technology reaching out to the masses, even those who don't know it!

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

[Duncan3]

This is AWESOME, a revolution in technology! World Hunger is fixed and AIDS is wiped out, all because...

1960's timesharing has been reinvented!!!! Woohoo!!!

Oh wait. *yawn*

They renamed it GRID computing and you all fell for it, *points and laughs* hahahahahahhahahahaha

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!!!

[ozborn]

I thought 1960s timesharing was nothing more than job submission and process load balancing run on supercomputers. Grid computing can involve 1000s of distributed nodes with millisecond (ethernet) latencies between them, that's not timesharing as far I know. The wheel isn't being reinvented here.

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!!!

[Vengeance_au]

1960's timesharing has been reinvented!!!!
Woohoo!!!

Oh wait. *yawn*

They renamed it GRID computing and you all fell for it, *points and laughs* hahahahahahhahahahaha

Duncan3, if you are still laughing and pointing, go stand in front of a mirror. One word for you : WRONG!

Timesharing is multiple people/jobs connecting to one mainframe or computer and "sharing" the useage of that single computer. Grid computing (aka distributed computing) is sharing one job over multiple computers. Totally different concept, completely different target audience.

now how did it go again? Ah, thats right....

*points and laughs* hahahahahahahahahahahaha

(I have mod points, but there is no -1 WRONG.... so I decided to take the piss instead :D)

Re:STOP THE PRESSES!!!

[MacKtheHacK]

Yes, the Grid can provide true parallelism, but it doesn't just do that by itself; the programmer has to divide the job up into tasks and distribute them. What the Grid provides is the framework to make that possible, and the security infrastructure to make it more likely that the owners of compute servers will allow other people to use their resources.

The computing model really is the mainframe one: you submit jobs to a queue and they get run and come back to you. You don't care or know when or where they get run. This model may be ancient, but it's how much of "business computing" is done.

personally

[asv108]

I prefer the term distributed computing, why did distributed computing turn in to grid computing?

Re:personally

[Mooncaller]

Distributed computing is the warp. Grid computing is distributed computing that also has a weft. Can't explain it any simpler then that. I had an usage example but it is related to a project that I am currently involved in that I realy can't discouse.

Re:personally

[groover mctasty]

I have spent some time reading "The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure" by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, as well as the OGSA/OGSA standards being worked on by the Global Grid Frome . This is how I make the distinction.

Distributed computing is a collection of ideas and practices of which Grid computing is a subset. Distributed computing involves any type of computational resource sharing over a range of couplings. Grid computing, basically, is the idea of taking the solutions distributed computing has come up with so far and making implementing them over widely distributed networks in a standard framework that will make sharing easy, flexible, and powerful. At the same time, faster computers, more available storage and higher bandwidth networks are pushing the development of new distributed technologies for applications suited to a standardized, available computational grid. These applications include physics simulations, tele-immersion (sort of a networked virtual reality), climate modeling, drug discovery, etc. Yeah these are all research applications. Just like the original Internet, the research community is a natural first audience. It will be interesting to see how companies and, eventually, consumers take advantage of the Grid in the future.

Re:personally

[Anonymous Coward]

This has gotta be one of the most uninformative answers to a question I have ever read in any public forum :)

Re:personally

[Brane]

The GRID is a project that started at CERN (The guys who invented the WWW) to analyse data from the Large Hadron Collider experiment(s).

It's actually one specific implementation of distributed computing, but apparently the name "Grid" caught on to the public and press, and so the term has become a general name for distributed computing projects.

At least, that's how I believe the story went...

Re:personally

[Mooncaller]

Well maybe you should learn some english. My answer describes the difference quit well.

Moderators: Please Read.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi there moderators.

Take a look at the name of the parent poster.

I mean read it.

Ok, now that I know you read it since I saw your lips moving, sound it out.

Say it.

Fooo-Ling-Yoooou?

Did his parents have a good sense of humor?

I rest my case, your honor.

Also:

_.oooooo..o___.oooooo._____.oooooo.
d8P'____`Y8__d8P'__`Y8b___d8P'__`Y8b
Y88bo.______888__________888______888
_`"Y8888o.__888__________888______888
_____`"Y88b_888__________888______888
oo_____.d8P_`88b____ooo__`88b____d88'
8""88888P'___`Y8bood8P'___`Y8bood8P'

_.ooooo.__oooo_oooo____ooo_ooo._.oo.____.oooo.o
d88'_`88b__`88._`88.__.8'__`888P"Y88b__d88(__"8
888___888___`88..]88..8'____888___888__`"Y88b.
888___888____`888'`888'_____888___888__o.__)88b
`Y8bod8P'_____`8'__`8'_____o888o_o888o_8""888P'

ooooo_________o8o_________________________ ____________.o.
`888'_________`"'_________________________ ____________888
_888_________oooo__ooo._.oo.___oooo__oooo_ oooo____ooo_888
_888_________`888__`888P"Y88b__`888__`888_ _`88b..8P'__Y8P
_888__________888___888___888___888___888_ ___Y888'____`8'
_888_______o__888___888___888___888___888_ _.o8"'88b___.o.
o888ooooood8_o888o_o888o_o888o__`V88V"V8P' o88'___888o_Y8P

Grid computing at VT

[pjdepasq]

I just recently heard that here at Virginia Tech we are getting a (massive?) grid comprised of some of the first dual-processor G5s rolling off the assembly line at Apple. The number of machines? I believe it was in the 1100 range.

Thus, if you like grid computing and want to do some research as a grad student or whatever, this might be the place for you.

"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[Animats]

Look who's pushing the idea - companies in desperate need of a new revenue model.

If you wanted to do this right now, you could cut a deal with a mid-range ISP. Buy an account on every server for use only during off-peak periods, run standard clustering software, and crunch all night. Run on a server farm with large numbers of identical machines interconnected with massive bandwidth. A true Beowulf cluster application.

Nobody does this. That's an indication there's no market for commercial "grid computing". Clusters, yes; reselling computer time, no.

Remember "push technology"? "Micropayments"? "Grid computing" will go the same way.

As for "peer to peer" systems, bear in mind that without copyright problems, music distribution would be trivial and cheap. Just put each new song out on Netnews. Netnews is far more efficient than any of the peer-to-peer systems. The music industry only generates a few tens of megabytes of new data per day, after all.

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[groover mctasty]

Who's pushing this idea is researchers. Witness the TeraGrid, the BioGrid, the Fermilab ACP. Companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and HP, are simply involved because they are convinced there will be a larger market in the future. These companies have done quite well with the current "revenue model".

If you don't believe me, check out .

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[groover mctasty]

this.

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[xdroop]

I disagree that this is a total waste of time.

I think that like every other overhyped idea (java, WAP, P2P) this idea will find a niche and some companies will do very well with it. I know that there is a market for startup semiconductor design firms to buy time on an existing grid rather than having to purchase and manage a private grid in house that will merely turn electricity into heat 75% of the time.

I do not think that it will change the world and make great coffee.

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[adz]

Look who's pushing the idea - companies in desperate need of a new revenue model.

No; it's mainly universities and researchers.

If you wanted to do this right now, you could cut a deal with a mid-range ISP.

A single company may not have all the resources you need. You may wish to harness a beowulf cluster from company A, terabytes of storage from company B and use data from a telescope owned by company C.
Also demand may be transient, you might need hundreds of GFlops one minute, then nothing for hours. It's a waste to have your own system that does nothing most of the time.

Remember "push technology"? "Micropayments"? "Grid computing" will go the same way.

I seriously doubt that. I would guess there's far more money, research and working examples of Grid computing.
Don't flippantly write off something you clearly know little about.

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[MacKtheHacK]

If you wanted to do this right now, you could cut a deal with a mid-range ISP. Buy an account on every server for use only during off-peak periods, run standard clustering software, and crunch all night. Run on a server farm with large numbers of identical machines interconnected with massive bandwidth. A true Beowulf cluster application.

No, you can't. Just try finding an ISP that would risk disrupting their systems to let you do that. The promise of the Grid is that it creates a standardized method of sharing computing resources, with a rich security model, so that ISPs could deploy grid software on their systems and know that grid applications are well-behaved. In the Globus Toolkit framework, for example, all grid applications run within an application server container, such as Tomcat, which means they're in a Java sandbox and can't muck with things they're not supposed to.

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[Animats]

No, you can't. Just try finding an ISP that would risk disrupting their systems to let you do that.

Given how hungry many mid-range ISPs are right now, you probably could, assuming you were planning to spend sizable amounts of money. (If you're not planning to spend sizable amounts of money, you don't need this technology anyway.) There are ISPs that let you run any Linux program you want, and have enough security in place to make that work. There's no reason you couldn't use their compute power right now if you paid for it.

I have a medium-sized database application running at night on a commercial ISP. I'm only paying $14.95 per month, they know what I'm doing, and they approve. It can be done right now.

"Grid computing" has the flavor of another NASA boondoggle. NASA, having failed with their launcher product line, keeps trying to expand into other product areas, including nanotechnology, biotech, robotics, and now grid computing. The work is generally inferior to work supported by the National Science Foundation. Now NASA has the "NASA Information Power Grid", another money sink in search of a killer app. Your tax dollars at work.

Re:"Grid computing" - stupid idea

[Animats]

Yeah, that. Written by a sell-side analyst from Merrill Lynch, a company under investigation for hyping Internet stocks. Merrill has already paid out over $100 million for such offenses. "New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer revealed e-mails that showed stock analysts privately referred to stocks as "dogs" while publicly maintaining buy ratings."

Parent escapes grid computer lameness filter

[ratfynk]

Attention please find anon coward post has escaped lameness filter with disasterous secret SCO code. Resulting compilation proves Linux is actually a reverse engineering of SCO Unix, not a real operating system. For that matter any program or operating system using C is just a clone of the IP of SCO. Attention all OS resellers prepare to meet thy doom. Be prepared to apply to Utah as the computer software center for all program code, including grid computing on the internet. (I just said that to be somewhere near on topic!)

considerations

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM, as well as other companies and organizations, is working on the Globus project and there are different scenarios out there. One of which is online gaming (butterfly.net). There are others, but right now, it's mainly scientific based. For the people who know, the Globus toolkit just reached version 3. This is important to know because this version is OGSA/OGSI (in draft) compliant which is an open standard describing the communication between the grid nodes (WSDL, WSDD, XML, etc). The grid is different from clusters and the grid is different from p2p computing. One view on the grid is use of remote resources. For instance, you can use en electron microscope remotely. Perhaps even with the DaVinci surgical machine, it would be possible to perform (minor) surgery remotely. The advantages of this are obvious. A specialist can help more people since it cuts on travel time. In my view, the grid cannot be applied to a certain solution meaning the grid isn't supposed to be for a certain problem, but rather, a new avenue to do things. With this in mind, the grid will grow according to how we think of using it. The Internet is an example of this type of growth. Furthermore, the grid is probably geared towards businesses and other backend operations. Later, perhaps, it'll become more of on online service directory in which you can find resources to do you work; printing facility, specialized resource use (super/quantum computers), and other things. Again, the grid will grow will become what we need it to be (even if we cannot predict it).

All aside, it's exciting technology, not to mention that the Globus toolkit was named on the of the top 10 techs that will change the world.

For those interested in security, the Globus toolkit involves an asynchronous certificate signing method initially and then move onto a synchronous method for better performance. The Globus books and papres call this a PKI scneario. (I'm not a security guy)

Also Globus is not the only grid tech out there. Seti at home is one (and their derivatives). There are also distributed storage methods in which you can send data onto the grid and it'll be there (somewhere safely tucked away).

fun stuff!

considerations 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Globus is open source and the services are written in Java. I just love this stuff.

Re:considerations 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Partially true. Version 2 is written in C. The new version (3) is written almost entirely in Java, apart from some small things that could not be acheived in Java.

Premature reorts of the grid's demise...

[jfabermit]

I really think the people complaining about not personally having a use for grid computing are completely missing the point. As long as enough people have a use for it, it will be useful. Having done a good number of calculations on a few different supercomputers, I can think of nothing that the grid currently offers to me...but I'm sure the people who run many-hundred processor jobs on a regular basis have a different perspective. For a while, the grid might be the plaything of big scientific and industrial computational projects, but has any technological advancement like this ever not caught on. Eventually, someone will figure out a new idea, only possible on a grid, which involves porn, gaming, or the ability to transfer media files in a manner of questionable legality, and soon kids will be asking what life was like without it back in the dark ages. A little patience, people, give the geniuses and madmen (not necessarily mutually exclusive) a little time to work...

Re:Premature reorts of the grid's demise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

It wastn't that long ago that pundits were saying that you would never need more than 640K of physical RAM.

"If you build it, they will come."

Grid at home as interactive graphic app

[Kvorg]

Everyone is assuming that Grid@Home would mean that you are just donating a bit of your computing power to the Grid. Not so.

I have been watching the developement of one such application: Gled , "a hierarchic server-proxy-client-viewer model written in C++ and offering a mixture of object oriented framework and toolkit" (says the project homepage) and I can say that it looks a lot more like a Quake window to a programmable scene made of very complex object collections, running on multiple systems (and with multiple users) with a GUI to its underlying cluster systems, than a Seti@Home screensaver.

My personal favourites are the autogenerated code, the autogenerated GUI and the object brokering facilities over the clusters.

The trend of Grid and Grid-like cluster computing is, IMHO, going in the direction of better viewing facilities, more interactive software and higher-level interfaces, where the underlying grid can be thought of as a piece of iron, a strange dynamic multiprocessor arhitecture with impossible latencies.

Links:

• Paper on Gled,
• Cactuscode (completely different approach),
• ROOT OO Data-analysis framework (Gled is a ROOT application),
• CERN Atlas Project Grid activities (what kind of thing its needed for).

Moderator: Read me ignore man on top me

[Anonymous Coward]

I am subject of racisms on Slashdot. I can not tell you who I am but parent poster is nonsense speaker. He has obsession with my name!

Software for URLs?

[subreality]

... software for the use of URL's, HTML, and HTTP ...

I think I heard someone refer to it as a "web browser" once.

Ok, I think I understand this

[3.5 stripes]

Clustering is to Grid (or distributed)
as
LAN is to WAN

or am I just fooling myself?

What's all the hype about?

[Moderation abuser]

"Grid" computing has been around for decades. People have been doing useful work with arrays of systems for a long time, both in the commercial and academic areas.

Re:What's all the hype about?

[rdean400]

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying but to me it looks like grid computing is a almagamation of web services and clustering. Shared resources, directory knows which machines are capable of which jobs, yadda yadda yadda.

A Way Forward for Grid Computing

[npch]

I've been working in the Grid Computing area for the last two and a half years, and would like to make a stand for all of us who aren't just worried about bigger supercomputers.

Supercomputers are great, but the number of big computing problems that can handle being run on distributed groups of supercomputers is small. That's why things such as the Earth Simulator and the ASCI programme still exist - sometimes it's just better to build a bigger box!

Where Grid Computing might take off in the science and business mainstream is collaboration and sharing of resources. In particular, I work on producing middleware to try and share and unify data resources. In the astronomy community for instance, they have spent many years standardising the naming schemes for their databases and as a result, projects such as Skyserver and SkyQuery are becoming possible. Now consider the bioinformatics field: hundreds of competing standards for naming things as simple as gene expression ids. Grid computing should provide some of the tools to make knowledge extraction from the many disparate scientific databases possible.

This has applications in business, and it's something we're already seeing in the uptake of Web Services. One recent Grid Computing initiative - Grid Services - is pushing the boundaries of Web Services, and extending them to standardise functionality such as state and lifetime management which should make them more useful for the kinds of collaborative problems which are cropping up in both business and science.

For instance: a car manufacturer has an agreement with different suppliers of airbags - obviously information exchange must take place to ensure safety of the passengers, but both the car manufacturer and airbag supplier will not necessarily want the other to be able to see all data for their parts, just use it. As suppliers change, the manufacturer must ensure that data is properly traced and expired. This is not much different from scientific collaborations, financial collaborations or even network gaming where we have a huge number of swiftly changing, transient resources.

It is these problems of dynamic collaboration and maintenance of resources that Grid Computing may eventually solve.

SWMD@Home

[Mandelbrute]

Use those unused CPU cycles in the search for disappearing African Uranium!

My question is

[garrulous]

when is bandwidth going to be so available/cheap that this is going to matter?

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[mikeage]

Just in case someone's not familiar with parallel programming terminology, embarassingly parallel means that each operation is independant of any other, so it can scale virtually perfect. The classic example:

1 women * 9 months = 1 baby
9 women * 9 months = 9 babies
9 women * 1 month != 1 baby

Putting 9 women on the baby-making task for 9 months is scales the baby-making operation, but since it's embarassingly parallel, it doesn't speed up any one operation (each baby still takes 9 months, but in those 9 months, you can now get 9 babies).

Another example (I made up the 10 factor):

1 worker * 10 days = 1 car
10 workers * 10 days = 10 cars
10 workers * 1 day = 1 car, because they can work on seperate things at the same time.

Of course, in reality, they can't quite work on things at the same time (steering wheel can't be installed before the body is welded together), so you have operations that block, leading to the steering wheel guy sitting around doing nothing, but you get the idea. This, of course, is where pipelining comes in...

Yes and here is a Random NYTimes Reg Generator

[leoaugust]

I fully agree with you 100 %. And tell me about it. And what do you think of this site . Random NYTimes.com Registration Generator http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html

You go here and it fills the NYTimes registration page with random characters. Maybe it might come handy some day, but, oh god, you must be pretty angry about it. Yeah. And tell me about it. I agree with you fully 100%.

How grid computing might affect me

[Funkitup]

As a student I have my disk space regulated, am I soon to have my CPU time regulated (this used to happen). I don't know whether I would end up with more CPU time available to me for a project or less?

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[datadictator]

Mmm, your example is incomplete, no ammount of woman can produce babies by themselves...

1 woman + 1 man * 9 months = 1 baby
1 woman + 1 /.'er * 9 months = 1 harrasment suit

etc.

"Grid" software standard important

[peter303]

The "Grid" prescibes a standard way of connecting distributed computers for large-scale computing. Sort of like the InterNet didnt really take off until more than 20 years after its inception, when http and browsers became standards.

Re:"Grid" software standard important

[supamegabig]

"a standard way of connecting distributed computers for large scale computing" it sounds like some kind of crazy big brother stuff to me... I know, lets break the backs of the laboring client computers in our struggle to find more and more ways to tie up computing cycles--for the good of the people! You need grid computing! And don't forget to drink your milk. Does a body good!

Re:"Grid" software standard important

[aminorex]

Http and browsers were insignificant in the popularization
of the Internet in comparison to the transcendence of the
640k memory limit.

Similarly, the "Grid" is insignificant in the populatization
of distributed computing in comparison to a forthcoming
change in the mode of operation of the individual computer.

Time to get that old 486 out of the closet

[Anonymous Coward]

.. hook it up to the grid and have the power of 500 petaflops.

Differences between clusters and grids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are grids and clusters the same thing? From what I've read/heard they seem very similar in that both involve large networks of computers working together and parallel processing, but are there any major differences?

OT: Stupid T3 Distributed computing tie in

[Mr.Sharpy]

Yes yes it's off topic, but after having seen T3 it has been bugging the hell out of me that at the end of the movie John said that there was no central computer for Skynet, but instead it had spread into thousands of machines on the internet. Isn't that fantastic!

And then I thought, well, if Skynet is actually a distributed computing app running on computers on the internet, then, when Skynet decided to blow up all of the cities, wouldn't it also be destroying the majority of its compute nodes and thus massively diminish its capacity. It would, after all, be living in the same cities as you and I. Not to mention that computers rely on the same infrastructure (power grids, telecom) as we do.

Ok, so I am anal, but a plot hole large enough to launch the shuttle through does catch my attention and drive me crazy for a while.

Re:OT: Stupid T3 Distributed computing tie in

[aminorex]

Chameleons happily sacrifice their tails.
Program mobility means that Skynet wasn't
dependent on any of those specific computers,
and hence all were dispensable. It's not a hole,
it's a tunnel to your destination.

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[mikeage]

Mmm, your example is incomplete, no ammount of woman can produce babies by themselves...

1 woman + 1 man * 9 months = 1 baby
1 woman + 1 /.'er * 9 months = 1 harrasment suit

Ah, true. You see, very few people on /. really understand the whole baby-making process... not something they're familiar with. (Despite my screw-up, I say they-- our first child is due in 8 days)

Linux and GRID Computing - Presentation on LT2003

[Snooweatinganima]

Just to let you know: there was a lengthy (but very interesting) presentation by Rüdiger Berlich from the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe about GNU/Linux' role in the GRID computing area.

His speech was very informative for me since I did not know there are that many scientific interests connected with GRIDs...also he gave some nice insights on the why of GRID computing - ever tried to cope with an annual dataflow of one petabyte? :)

The paper from his speech was on the Linuxtag DVD, I think it's ok if I let you have it.

Presentation from Rüdiger Berlich about GRID Computing and Linux, given at the LinuxTag2003.

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[jonfelder]

I don't get it...the man sits around for 9 months and then a woman comes along and poof a baby is born?

(1 woman + 1 man) * 9 months = 1 baby

Order of operations man! Gotta get those parenthesis right.

Try *148* dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

link

33 of those dead are since the war was 'over' on May 1st.

Butterfly sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but Butterfly sucks - I saw their schtick at GDC. All smoke, no fire. If this is the future of gaming then we are all going back to our Nintendos.

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[datadictator]

While I do understand the baby making process quite well. I am not actively pursuing it as an option right now.
Thus far I have quite happilly stuck it out at step 1.
Sadly it seems that's about to end. My girlfriend of two years left me this morning....
life's a bitch.

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[aminorex]

The car example is interesting, in that 1 worker will take
much much longer than 10 days to make a car, although
10 workers can easily make a car in 1 day, because no
one worker has the easy facility with all 10 of the distinct
production roles in producing a car. This is counter to
the argument of the skeptic of parallelism who claims that
Amdahl's law makes parallel computation inherently
inefficient, and points to what may be the single most
appealling aspect of the "Grid" paradigm for distributed
computing, to wit:

As opposed to clustering or even p2p, "Grid" is (albeit in a
vague and unfocussed manner) begining to amalgamate
diverse and disparate resources which can be used to
construct productive pipelines in which each contributing
system's peculiar strengths are more efficiently utilized
than is possible in a homogenous system, where the
imbalance in the resource uses of a particular application
almost *never* matches the imbalance in the resource
supply: The Grid is subsetted so that the global system
implementing a production pipeline is efficiently utilized,
or, to flip the coin, the intrinsic underutilization of
an inefficient pipeline construction does nothing to
harm the grid -- it only means that the remaining
unutilized capacity is available to other dynamic subsets,
to be utilized in other production pipelines.

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[aminorex]

Man is optional.

Re:Embarassingly Parallel WAS: Seti@Home

[mikeage]

I don't get it...the man sits around for 9 months and then a woman comes along and poof a baby is born?

(1 woman + 1 man) * 9 months = 1 baby

Order of operations man! Gotta get those parenthesis right.

Not exactly, because you really only need the man for a few seconds (though I pity the guy who's that quick). So perhaps:

(1 woman + 1 man) * 30 seconds + (1 woman * 9 months) = 1 baby?

Who knew sex could be made so boring?

Grid Computing

[dtirpack]

You could have read Ian Foster writing about grid computing in April's Scientific American. If you can't find a copy, try sciam.com