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A Cluster Of Pocket PCs
Don Stratton writes "This is the coolest thing I have seen anyone do with a Pocket PC... ever!
Well-known Pocket PC developers SPB Software House, located in Russia, have come up with a very interesting spin on computing clusters. The short version is they connected 12 Pocket PCs together in the first known 'supercomputer cluster' of its type and had it calculate the old '3n + 1' problem. It was just done for fun, and not intended to seriously compete with desktop computers, but it does point out some interesting possiblilities for the future of handhelds with wireless connectivity working in ad-hoc computing clusters."
Is that a beowulf cluster in your pants, or are you happy to see me?
in soviet russia... i mean... imagine a beowulf... um... no comment
--Slashdot readers delight in generalizing the behavior of other Slashdot readers.
Parallelize 3n+1? It looks like it cannot be parallelized. On the other hand, they could try several different starting n's at once, but that is not very interesting...
now I can open up my contacts with blazing speed!
...if I just didn't need a backpack to carry it all around with me.
/.
Chalk up another nerdgasm that got posted to
IBM is introducing their lates server line, the IBM ButterKnife series, featuring a fully hot swappable cluster of up to 200 MS Pocket PC's. On good days you'll get the output of a screaming 386!
"Oh... There it goes... my brain stopped" - Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy.
In Soviet Russia, Pocket PCs imagine a beowulf cluster of YOU!
That or report for a MBA marketing buzzword course.
The "3n + 1" problem involves starting with a particular integer n, and repeatedly performing the following operation:
If (n is even) divide n by 2;
Else multiply n by 3, and add 1.
For example, starting with the number 6, we get the following series:
6, 3, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1...
The 4,2,1 loop repeats over and over, so it's usually convenient to terminate the process once it is entered. All numbers tested so far eventually hit this loop, although it has not been proven that all numbers do.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
expect things to come out of russia, china, india, and eastern europe in years to come.
I'm talking to a cubiclemate about it and said "Do ya wanna see the computational horsepower of the server we just turned off?"
And held up my old iPaq and new iPaq. (The server was a dual PPro 200.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
building a cluster of pocket pcs is fun and all, but I bet that the most fun part of the project was posting about it here on /. just to see the flood of beowulf cluster in soviet russia jokes.
Imagine the number of Beowulf comments this story draws.
There is going to be a time where everything will be plugged into the Grid. Man, I can't wait!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
This sort of reminds me of what they're doing with blue gene. Instead of using hot, ultra fast processors, they're using what amounts to 2 embeded processors per node and depending on kick ass networking to carry the load.
For parallel problems, sometimes faster processors is not better...
You say
Come to think about it, having something in between WI-FI and bluetooth might make for big wireless networking capabilities in a handheld. If the market penetration were high enough, you could route a packet from anywhere to anywhere as long as you had a high enough TTL.
The challenge would be in organizing the routing tree. You'd have an advantage in that generally two nodes that are close to each other would tend to stay that way over moderate periods of time. Even on the road your handheld would stay close to the others in your same lane of traffic.
If you could set up these devices to be able to share CPU automatically when idle it would mean that your handheld could utilize the CPU and RAM of the handheld in the briefcase belonging to the guy in front of you on the plane.
Certainly none of this is ready for prime time, but it does raise some interesting possabilities.
Wait, put down the phone. Stop dialing 911. Wait, stop!
Information here, pics here.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I fugure 24 of them should more or less keep track of most of the worlds time zones.
...a "cluster" of more or less randomly distributed and connected computers isn't such a bad idea.
:) But I think it would be worth a try.
On universities, 99% of computers run with nearly zero CPU load for most of the time. People read emails, surf the web, but for most of the time the computers idle. And then someone has some work reaoznajeszdy, waits in queue for a month, throws data on the university campus dedicated cluster, waits for results for a week and receives results that are invalid due to some mistake in input data, so whole procedure must be repeated all over.
Now imagine, we install a "cluster server" on all networked computers. Assign certain resources to the project and let our PC participate in that cluster. It loads a custom computational module for given task, loads data from some anonymous dude on the other end of the world and computes his project. Heaviest "daily" stuff gets finished within few hours. It doesn't really disturb you - works as "idle task", just like SETI@home or such. But, say, you're a raytracer. You prepare a nice animation in LightWave and would leave it overnight to render. Just upload it to the net and have it rendered in 5 minutes on the worldwide cluster. Cool, eh?
Of course the system could be abused. I think some "credit system" would be in order, so people who provide more, get better priority. Plus some way of authoring the "modules" so it couldn't be used to take over the computer. And of course this would be the first step to creating a self-conscious AI, good or evil
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
A few weeks back I submitted an article about some mini-clusters we made at the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida. Here's a link: http://helios.engr.ucf.edu/beowulf/miniature.phtml "
I can't WAIT for the first 802.11g-enabled wristwatch, imagine being able to link up ad-hoc to a dozen other watches and be able to... ...uhm... ...to tell time twelve times as efficiently!
For some geeky reason, the notion that you could spontaneously assemble a fairly powerful "machine" just by getting together with a bunch of suitably equipped friends really appeals to me.
Mark my words: this meme will eventually find its way into a movie. A bunch of people will be trapped together. and the obvious geek will hook a bunch of their PDA's together in order to decode a message or open some sort of cypher lock which will disarm the deadly hazard and free the people with mere seconds to spare. And, of course, he'll get the girl.
I envision nightmarish scenes out of "Small Soldiers"... lilliputian armies of talking Barbies, chasing people down and carving them up.
I don't know about you, but the day my Palm Tungsten's calendar shows I've got a 4 p.m. meeting with Death, I'm a headin' for the hills.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic