Slashdot Mirror
Distributed Computing on Next Gen Consoles
anonymous lion writes "Wired has a story on the need for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to support distributed computing with a non-gaming purpose. The article goes on to discuss SETI@home, distributed.net, and Folding@Home." From the article: "The next generation of console gaming is going to see a huge increase in machine performance and overall computing power. Already planned for both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are multiple 3.2-GHz PowerPC processors capable of handling advanced gaming and graphics simulations, along with out-of-the-box internet capabilities such as Xbox Live Silver. With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use."
How about switching the thing off?
Its not that a game console is something like a desktop pc, running the whole day just to be quickly accessable....
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
And most people won't offer to have their console used for Seti or folding or whatever. Something that's needed more then horsepower, is the willingness to bother with it. And that will stop too many of these things from being overly popular.
[nt]
It's great to help cure cancer, but not if it causes the number of polygons on Lara Croft's breasts to drop.
Also, will users have a choice concerning whether to so use their consoles' spare cycles, or will it happen without their concent or even overt knowledge? Will they be able to decide which project gets the use of their machine's time? And what if someone comes up with an entertainment use for those cycles...?
Sure,
the average consumer LOVES to waste power and bandwidth to search for aliens. Folding, Seti & others are good projects, but if Wired thinks the average console owner wants his console to suck power, bandwidth, and make huge fan noise while not doing something with it,they may be seriously mistaken.
I'm sure the same people that run Linux on their XBOX will run folding on their console, but not the majority of users, even if the console ships with that functionality.
I'm fed up with the idea that sharing is caring. I don't like to share. I don't want anyone using my bandwidth, my CPU-cycles, my harddrive or my bathroom. It's not that I don't have a high bandwidth connection or several idle CPU's laying around, it's just that I don't like the idea of giving when all I want is recieving (i.e. torrent) I say we put an end to this hippiecomu P2P and other distributed services once and for all.
I think someone has confused something they would like with an actual requirement. I can just see all the parents lining up to subscribe to this 'need' because they really want to use their jumped up electricity bills to help search for extratrestrial life signs
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Lets look at it another way. Who would turn on a console, and use it 24/7 day in day out, and leave it idle so we can share processor cycles with each other? So great, know with distributed computing on XBOX, I'm glad I took a course in .Net.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Oh wait...
Can you see Sony or Microsoft putting this onto their extremely important consoles? They have plenty of things that will make them money to worry about. It isn't even cool; it goes against the sleek silver hardware if anything.
Why should I give some organization a free ride on my hard earned dollars used to purchase the console,the games, and the electricity to keep it on? They stand to make big bucks by selling information aquired from these projects.What's in it for me? Free games? Yeah, right.
Folding@home especially, since they have ties to some major pharmacuetical companies. I have an elderly friend that is on socially security that has to use pretty much all of her social security
check every month to buy two, prescriptions that she needs for her health. She has no other source of income so she has to have assistance from the government. If you pay taxes, that means you. So
the drug companies are not only making money off of her, they are also sticking their hands in your pockets.
So, what's in it for me?
Is it even possible to do double precision math on these consoles?
All of the new console makers are going to be losing mega cash for each console sold, so why would they make any incentive for anyone to buy their consoles and use them as computers? The manufacturers lose money on the console and lose any possible revenue from game sales.
.01% of the uber-nerd population is insanity.
If the console manufacturers provide software that somehow taps the raw horsepower of the new consoles what would stop organizations, legal or not, from buying large quantities of game systems just to make a supercomputer for very cheap? Fuck that.
If I had not preordered my PS2 a year in advance I would have had to wait NINE months to be able to get one in the states. The demand for the new systems is going to be even greater. The last thing consumers need to hear is that there is a shortage of their favorite game system because Nerd University bought 10,000 systems for their new supercomputer project.
Shared computing is all fine and good for PC/Mac users, but honestly, for a manufacturer to open the floodgates of their OS to satisfy the wants of
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
At least with current platforms architectures. The author seems to do plenty of research on current distributed computing projects, but does none on how the consoles perform.
I know that SETI@home has been ported and tested at least on the XBox, and it performs miserably. These console gaming systems are designed to play games, not do radio signal analysis or other scientific calculation. For example, there's little need for fast memory writing when you're mostly reading textures from RAM, but there's an extreme need when you do millions of in-place Fourier transforms. Unless Microsoft and Sony change their architectures for some inexplicable reason, I can't imagine future architectures would perform much better.
This article smacks of ignorance on the part of the author, who clearly did no research into the actual performance of consoles in regard to standard scientific computing.
When PS2 was announced there were too (marketing) people asking "how are we going to use all that power?!" Now we still have to live with the fact that a new playstation wont be replacing the old and nowadays really underpowered PS2 for a year.
pop over to www.boincsynergy.com hehe ;D
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Since distributed computing projects crank your CPU to 100%, there's definitely an associated energy and environmental cost to running that stuff. This will become increasingly true in the future, with the increasing prevelence of technologies like Intel's "SpeedStep" or AMD's "Cool And Quiet" that allow CPU clockspeeds to dynamically vary the clockspeed and power consumption of a processor. That will only increase the difference in power consumption between a CPU at rest and a CPU that's pegged at 100% crunching SETI units.
Distributed computing advocates always seem to neglect this. They think that all those unused CPU cycles are a vast, untapped resource just waiting to accomplish fabulous things. Well, as a guy who used to have a few boxes crunching RC5-64 for Distributed.net, I can tell you that it's not a free resource when you're the one paying the electric bill.
Joe Consumer isn't necessarily going to think this technology is a great idea when he realizes that he's paying an extra $10 a month on his electricity bill for the "privilege" of crunching numbers for some dubious cause.
And, let's face it. Not all distributed projects are dubious, but many are. The fundamental problem is that a lot of compute-intensive projects simply aren't embarassingly parallel like SETI or RC5-64. And a lot of other parallelizable applications require access to huge datasets that make them unsuitable for distributed work. For example, 3D rendering can be parallelized pretty well... but the datasets are huge. For your CPU to render a single frame of Pixar's latest movie, it would need access to anywhere from hundreds of MB to several GB of texture and geometry data. A lot of scientific applications are similarly constrained.
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And in future news, XBOX360 and PS3 copy protection schemes circumvented by Distributed Computing apps. Homebrew game developers, owners of DVDs from other regions, and backup-copy gamers rejoice.
The last thing consumers need to hear is that there is a shortage of their favorite game system because Nerd University bought 10,000 systems for their new supercomputer project.
But I say "Go ahead!", I always buy new everything-computer-related months after they are released, when the obvious bugs are patched and the price maybe drops a bit.
Part of the price of the console is the R&D cost, if Nerd University is going to subsidize part of it with their projects by buying 10,000 of them, and thus making the price slash for the rest of us occur earlier, why not?
Oliver.
Distributed projects have been around for a long time. Some of them are (SETI@Home) are cool, some were even useful to prove the point (Distributed.net), but what are the real-life uses of calculating Pi to the gazzillionth number? Come on - where is the benefit that you can take advantage today, tomorrow and every day after that?
There are none - in many respects those well known projects is waste of CPU time and electricity. But there are projects that aim to create something that will be of daily use to everyone... like a search engine. How many times you use WWW search engine every day? I use loads, so much that I could live with Internet Explorer 1.0, but I could not live without a search engine.
One of those projects is the Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine project (http://www.majestic12.co.uk/) that aims to build a search engine contributed to and controlled by the community. We need help - if just a fraction of people who run other distributed projects joined us we could have build a major search engine in no time! You can run it with CPU intensive projects!
Disclaimer: I am the founder of this project.
alexc
Join Majestic-12 Distributed Search Engine
Woh nall these new games anyway? I just want pong!
The article mentions discovering how protiens fold. Why? So they can use that info to make drugs that they can patent and charge us an arm and a leg for. They want to map the human genome. Why? For the same reason. There is a company in Utah that has patented a gene that can lead to breast cancer and they charge hundreds of dollars for a test that can be had for less than $10 if the patent fees are subtracted out. To make matters worse they have actually stopped other companies from researching cures that can be related to that gene. Here we have a clear case of patents inhibiting progress that is outside the world of software. Since our politicians have such a difficult time grasping why our runaway patent system needs reform maybe some non-software issues like this will help.
Another role is to research materials science. Why? To make new products to patent and then sell to us. Here's an idea, why don't we use grid computing to help a non-profit discover something that they can patent (required in todays world) and then sell to the world at cost. So how many Slashdotters want to help the international mega-corporations get even richer?
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
Want to get paranoid? You do? Cool!
Figure: There are plenty of distributed computing projects out there, and it may not be easy to tell from your console's behavior what project you're actually contributing to. Now consider who makes those consoles:
Now imagine your always-on entertainment console spying on your home network PC and reporting back on anything questionable that it finds.
But that's not all! Given Microsoft's security in the past, how likely is it that the XBox 360 will be properly secured against bad incoming data, malware, etc.? How likely is it that Sony can completely secure theirs? How unlikely is it that a poorly written DC-client wouldn't open up some sort of security hole?
Now imagine your console actually slipping a virus to your computer, behind your home firewall, while it's searching your computer for warez and deleting your MP3s.
Appreciate the FUD ! (Okay, I couldn't resist. It's Sunday morning and the past few weeks have made me punchy.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Well, it may not be much of an issue now, but this is quickly changing.
Both Microsoft and Sony are playing with the idea that these game consoles will do more than merely play games. If it also has DVR functionality, advanced DVD capabilities, etc., then the day will soon arrive where people DO leave them on 24x7.
I have a TiVo, which is just a special-purpose computer. I wouldn't mind at all if it had a "power down" mode that would run a grid application such as trying to help cure cancer while it's not recording anything and I'm not watching anything.
And for what it's worth, both my Xbox and PS2 stay on 24x7. When I'm done playing a game, I usually just switch the input on the tv, not actually turn the console off. Am I alone in this?
What if some company would find a smart way to pay the users for the use of their CPU cycles?
I can't see direct payment working, since what they would be able to pay would not be very much per person, and probably not to keep people interested.
But what if someone made a MMOG of some type, where people could play online for nothing but the cost of the CPU also working on some distributed computing.
Also you could get additional 'upgrades' in the game by leaving the program running when not playing.
I see this is a win-win-win situation, free games for the user, sales point for the console maker, computational work for the researchers. Provided of course that the value of the work done is enough to pay for continued development and maintance of the game and its servers.
If Martz wants to use the video game consoles and electricity of people to do his calculations, let him give the people something they want in return, like free games.
That would probably be enough to motivate a lot more people to turn their machines over to SETI.
The idea that people are going to let their machine run their crunching away, for free, for no benefit, is pretty stupid. The first distributed computing project to offer any sort of tschocke is likely to become more help.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
It allows them to make detailed predictions about the dynamics of materials, truly a vital task. If we could predict materials properties (hardness, tensile strength, conductivity, surface roughnes, etc.) by playing with composition on a computer -- much cheaper than by experiments, and much more controllable -- then we would have an entirely new realm of engineering. The community that does EON-like simulations do the physics for precisely this; EON does these simulations on a massive scale.
So go run it! (PS I think there are a huge number of similarly parallelizable, and even more important, scientific problems that scientists would release as distributed apps if they saw more people volunteering computer time.)
I don't know precisely what sort of algorithm SETI@Home uses, but the 7 SPE vector units in the Cell chip would be near-ideal for many types of signal processing (far far more so than the original Xbox), so I think it likely it'd work very well indeed.
If the owner could be bothered leaving it on all day - and if Sony actually sell an HDD/Linux option for enough to make an overall profit. Otherwise, there's no way in hell they'll subsidise your climb up the Folding@Home ladder.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
" If 100 million MIPS could do the job of the human brain's 100 billion neurons, then one neuron is worth about 1/1,000 MIPS, i.e., 1,000 instructions per second. That's probably not enough to simulate an actual neuron, which can produce 1,000 finely timed pulses per second. Our estimate is for very efficient programs that imitate the aggregate function of thousand-neuron assemblies. Almost all nervous systems contain subassemblies that big."
extracted from "transhumanist
With 400million of these puppies tied together we've a potential 10^19 - 10^20 IPS machine.
I'm one of those people who wish the PS2-70k had an off button because standby is really unnecessary (especially for a console) and I have to unplug it from the power outlet to use the other devices on my SCART hub.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Is not Xbox notorious for overheating and burning something out within a year anyway?
So leaving it on 24/7 is just asking for hardware malfunction
What if some company would find a smart way to pay the users for the use of their CPU cycles?
Anything like what you described (or any compensation for your CPU cycles) is unlikely to ever happen. Reason? Most of the organizations asking for your CPU cycles are either too poor or too cheap to give you anything in return. They can't even afford to pay for the power usage that you incur, let alone put anything towards your hardware.
And for what it would cost to create and maintain a MMOG like what you're talking about, at least one people would be interested in playing, they could just buy an assload of computers (think $100 to $200 a pop barebones systems) and plug them in.
Not that it isn't a cool idea, just not feasible. You have to see the organizations asking you to run this software for what they really are...beggers. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, as long as you realize they will probably never have anything to offer you (other than the warm and fuzzy feeling of geekiness).
heh....can any one say....Zombie Net from hades?
"Yeah, and I'd like a toilet made out of solid gold." The Author of the article lives in a dreamland. Distributed computing on a gaming platform will never, ever, happen. Why? To create some program that would harness the power of a game system would be an incredible security risk for the manufacturers as any distributed processing program would have to access the core of game system. If such a program were to be made available the games systems would be totally hacked in an extremely short period of time. It makes no sense for the game system manufacturers to open their systems up for distributed processing when almost nobody would use it and it would only invite "dead sales" of their games systems by organizations, or individuals that have no interest in games and only want to set up a makeshift supercomputer. A game system is for playing games, that's it. 99% of the persons buying a game system do not want to cure cancer with their game system, they want to blow things up and that's fine, that's what game systems are made for. All of the game companies are going to lose a lot of money on the hardware for several years and for the game companies to slit their own necks for a function that NOBODY will use, sans hackers, is INSANE. Lasty, is SETI going to reimburse anyone for burning out their brand new PS3 or XBox 360 because the distributed processing software pushed the hardware a little too hard? What about the wear and tear on the components from running at 100% for 8 hours while the owner sleeps? The author of this article should work for spyware company with his comment "A better method of delivery to the consumer would be to build the client as an update to firmware." Translated: "A better method would to be to put the DC software automatically, or part of the EULA." Sounds like spyware to me. Also the whole article seems to be written so the author can sound like a pompass ass, "I would never use my game system to play games, pish, posh! I am curing cancer with my PS3, therefore I am better than you." If the cure to Cancer is reliant on the buyers of videogame systems to burn out their systems "for the greater good" then I'm afraid we are all doomed.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
With people having access to several cores for handling computation, there are still some who would think we need a Physics Card. Wouldn't you hate it to know that you have 4 cores on a system, and yet your system is only using one because someone thought we needed proprietary cards for everything.
Perhaps IBM doesn't just want to sell chips to these people. Perhaps it has a reason for selling the PC division to Lenovo. Perhaps it sees an opportunity to create a business architecture in which the virtual business world runs on the server farm, while the graphics and sound capability of the very cheap clients delivers a superior user experience that makes users happy not to have a "PC" on their desk. Meanwhile the data mining and compute-intensive activities are farmed out to those clients while they aren't being used. Fault tolerant. Cheap to extend. And round objects to Microsoft.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
What a strange person- http://www.myfunasianwife.com/
regards
AC
> At least with current platforms architectures.
>The author seems to do plenty of research on
>current distributed computing projects, but does
>none on how the consoles perform.
Apparently from what you posted you don't know jack shit about those new consoles architectures...
>For example, there's little need for fast memory
> writing when you're mostly reading textures from
>RAM, but there's an extreme need when you do
>millions of in-place Fourier transforms.
PS3 has XDR-DRAM which is way faster than DDR2. GDDR3 for Xbox 360 UMA memory and PS3 VRAM is faster too.
For FFT, the Cell processor in PS3 performs 100 times faster than Pentium 4 in some tests, if properly configured.
my electricity bill for 6 servers and 4 desktops, and everything else in my house is very very extremly expensive, thats all i need now, another multiple cpu machine to be on 24/7 for a extra £300 a year in electricity!
but i have enough "always-on" appliances in my house sucking up electricity. i am not about to have another one adding to the electric bill.
the article talks about distributed computing on large scale which is not very feasible for all the above mentioned reasons like
a) companies wouldn't spend money on building this into the console
b) most consumers cannot be bothered
There will be people who'd be interested though. I'd try it if I had a ps3... However with more and more use of clustered smaller machines in place of large supercomputers, clusters of consoles have been built in unis and research labs (for example here or here. There are a few advantages to using consoles:
a) they are cheaper
b) they are small form factor
c) they have hardware optimised for computation (at least ps2 does and ps3 will).
Sony had released linux on ps2 and word is they will be releasing linux for ps3 with extensions for the Cell's SPUs. Once ps3 has a fully featured OS any scientific app can be ported and modified to run on it. Now M$ on the other hand, well, I don't see them releasing any OS for XBOX 2*Pi but maybe the xbox linux crowd will take care of that.
You will mind leaving next gen consoles on and at full cpu usage 24/7 as soon as you see the powerbill at the end of the month.
Though Xbox 360 requires modding or an official treatment by Microsoft in its firmware to add a client for distributed computing which is very unlikely, PS3 will be able to run it from day one on its Linux, and even an SPE-optimized version of a client may be available later.
Okay guys, uh, these eggs are giving us a lot of trouble in the past.
Uh, does anybody need anything off this guy or can we bypass him?
Uh, I think Leeroy needs something from this guy.
Oh, d'he...he needs his "Devout Shoulders"? Doesn't, isn't he a paladin?
Yeah, but that'll help him heal better. He'll have more mana.
(sigh) Christ. Okay, uh, well, what we'll do, I'll run in first, uh,
gather up all the eggs. We can kind of just, you know, blast 'em all
down with AOE. Um, I will use "intimidating shout" to kind of scatter
'em so we don't have to fight a whole bunch of them at once. Uh, when
my shout's done, uh, I'll need Anfrony to come in and drop his shout
too, uh, so we can keep 'em scattered and not have to fight too
many. Um, when his is done, Bass, of course, 'll have to run in and do
the same thing. Um, we're gonna need "Divine Intervention" on our mages,
uh so they can uh, AE, uh, so we of course can get 'em down fast
because we're bringing all these guys, I mean, we'll be in trouble if
we don't take 'em down quick.
I think it's a pretty good plan. We should be able to pull it off
this time. Uh, what do you think abduhl, can you give me a number
crunch real quick?
Uhh, yeah, give me a sec, I'm coming up with 32.33, uh, repeating of
course, percentage of survival.
Well that's a lot better than we usually do. uh, (inaudible) about
ready guys?
Allright, chum-bums, let's do this. LEEEEROOY MMMJYEENKINS!
Oh my God, he just ran in.
Save him!
O jeez, stick to the plan!
Oh Jesus.
Let's go. Let's go.
Stick to the plan, chums! Stick to the plan!
Oh gee, oh fuck.
(inaudible) Divine Intervention.
Hurry up!
All this talk of bills and wasted power and bandwidth is very 1st world, don't you think? The true cost is the waste of resources and the potential worsening of what will already be an increase in power consumption thanks to the excessive processors in these new machines. It pisses me off to think of all that extra pollution just for the sake of a battle which is essentially between Idei and Gates.
I like my X-Box packed with all features
But Mom, the only reason I'm getting one is so it can connect to a shared computer thing and help cure cancer while creating a simulation of the big bang so our scientists can advance civilization to new heights!
If O2 is good, O3 must be 1.5 times better!
Can't find any figures on PS2/XBox power consumption, but you're probably looking at around 100W each (my DVD player takes around 140, for example), so that's around 150 kilowatt hours/month, which (at the rates I, in the UK, pay for electricity) is around $29/month. Unless you're leaving it on for game state, WHY???
(If someone in the US could work out how much 150 kilowatt hours actually costs, would be appreciated)
However... doesn't the noise drive you nuts? I've woken up in the middle of the night, and been driven nuts trying to figure out what the background noise was, before tracking it down to the PS2 left on by my flatmates.
Fearsome! That must be The Face That Sunk A Thousand Ships!
how about running Operation Xbox (the neoproject)
dont know if you guys remember this (and the official site was taken down) but this is description from xbox-scene.com
"The goal of Operation Project X is to crack the 2048-bit RSA private encryption key Microsoft uses to sign Xbox media. The goal of this project is to make it possible to run Linux on a Microsoft Xbox console without a so-called modchip. A total of US$ 100,000 will be awarded by Michael Robertson ("donor")."
I doubt many people are going to offer their home console systems for this purpose.
But given the relatively low cost and simple setup of these machines, labs could buy racks of them and use them as compute nodes. Perhaps Sony and Microsoft can view any small per-unit loss they may take on these machines as subsidizing research.
1. I bought my first Mac in February. Now it seems PPCs are not in the Mac future.
2. I run ClimatePrediction.net on my Mac and Linux x86 systems. The program is huge, comes from a mainframe environment, and is married to an INTEL compiler. The PPC version is, needless to say, not very fast. Single work units can take months to complete.
The other projects in the article would be on my plate, too, if they compared with my concern for climate change.
That's one reason why manufacturers try to develop materials with controlled expansion rates to minimize temperature related stresses.
OTOH, there are other failure modes. For instance, migration of atoms in semiconductors becomes faster with higher temperatures. A semiconductor that isn't used very much will probably fail faster if it's kept continuously powered.
Of course, this discussion is entirely academic, failure rates for electronic equipment are low enough that obsolescence is, by far, the more common reason for substitution. Why keep your console running for a century if in five years or so it will be trashed? Just power it off when it's unused, our Planet thanks you.
No longer do we have to worry about ZOMBIE computers but now we have to worry about our console going ZOMBIE
This is a great idea but people are only going to do it if it is really easy. Why cant the software go on a cd like the rest of the games? Cuz i know i woulnt want to mess up my new $300 xbox.
Technabyte - Read my tech news blog.
But really, even though most won't do anything like this due to leaving it on all the time, I would imagine if Folding@home or any other disease research distributed computing projects have any likliness of success, the next generation of consoles could give them a leap in power.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
In my area, Florida, it would cost around $12.50 a month using your numbers.
Something I've thought about a few times, but done no research on whatsoever, is the possibility of distributed computing on mobile phones. They are getting more and more powerful, more and more ubiquitous, and they are connected to a network. And they're kept on all day with their processors idle for the most part. We could use this computing horsepower for somthing that will benefit all of society, such as processing marketing data.
On average.
"They are, after all, an almost 100% efficient heater."
Electricity has to be generated. Most generation plant is around 35% -> 40%, CCGT around 60%.
Electricity is an extremely inefficient way of providing heat. In houses heated or cooled with electricity the most efficient thing you could do is rip out the heating and air conditioning and replace it with district heating and district cooling.
Deleted
The Cell processor (PS3) is made for those applications. At the Power.org convention in Barcelona, IBM presented a programming example of large FFTs on Cell. It turned out, that large FFT calculations are about 100 times faster than on a Xeon 3.2 GHz processor.
Keep in mind, that this presentation was held in front of super computer professionals and its not that easy to trick them.
I agree with the opinions here that the average gamer maybe won't be able to spare the cycles EVENTUALLY; i.e. first games for these advanced machine won't need all the power. So early games may be able to spare it. For me, I am such a lousy gamer that a) my classic Galaxian that I will buy yet again will have 2.8 CPU's to spare and b) I am so slow at current games that again, I will have a CPU to spare. However, these games have the freedom to not have to cooperate with other tasks on the system. So some sort of sharing will have to be either built into the game or hidden from it by the "OS". Will be a neat thing, though. Ask MS to sign a Folding "game" for enthusiasts ... post my Folding scores to Live, etc. Maybe I could "help" the folding? Monitor it, guide it, make some decisions? Doubtful, but cool!
"With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use."
Now the Captain is wondering how many of us actually leave our consoles on when not in use? Show of hands... Now! Hmmm, not too many. Now how many of you would actually like to pay extra in electric bills to do it? Ouch. Even less. And finally, how many are going to mod their PS3 and actually downloard the app to make it happen? That leaves just about... Nobody.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
That almost sounds like they are doing me a favour by letting me help them with their seti or whatever it is they have.
I'm the one who is consuming electricity, I'm the one that bought the machine (or will buy), I'm ... etcetera.
With a desktop at least you can argue that the software is running on idle cycles in between work cycles, or as a screensaver. With a console, you'd need to let the machine run the software on purpose. Slight difference at first glance, yet big enough to be a problem.
So in the end it comes down to one question: what's in it for me?
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
Wait... if Microsoft and Nintendo are both getting these 3.2+GHz PowerPC processors for their new systems, then why is Apple complaining that PowerPC processors have not broke 3.0GHz?? (their reasoning for switching to Intel)
Are these not the same PPC used with Apple? (PowerPC 970 FX for the game systems, not sure about the G5)
MHz for MHz, a 3.2GHz PPC should kick the crap out of a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, and shouldn't be far behind--if behind at all--the performance of a P4 or AMD 3.8GHz (or whatever they're up to now).
Or are these magical, centaur processors that Nintendo and Microsoft have secretly found but allude Steve Jobs?
I am exactly in that situation, my mother has a treatable disease, but cannot afford the treatment. :-( :-)
I also had a homeless friend that died of cancer, University of Texass Medical Branch kept putting him off and giving him the run-around until it was to advanced to treat.He died in the street.
That is why when I see wealthy faygotz in there expensive cars acting all snobby, with nose in the air, I make it a point to run my keys up and down the sides of their car.
It keeps the auto body guys in business, so I am doing my part to boost the economy.
I also will stop to render aid to a rich person, but I do charge for this service, 5000 dollars a minute.If you don't pay, I'll assume that you have refused my offering to help you, which would clear me of any legal hassles.
Kill the rich.
Why would people do this? So their Clan would get a higher score! If winning is not important, Commander, why keep score? Don't underestimate the average gamer's fascination with scores and rankings. In fact, I think this is crucial to the process.
Seriously, if this is like Folding@Home that gets out of the way when the CPU is being used, it would still get some crunching done in the game chat rooms and the in-between-the-levels limbo modes. If there's enough computing power left over for live TeamSpeak stuff, then there's power to spare (and to be used when you aren't speaking -- those who sing in TeamSpeak need not apply).
If the distributed computing organizations really wanted this to fly, all they'd have to do is partner with Amazon to offer a $1 off coupon on the game if you buy the version with the distributed client built-in.
Of course cancer or aliens isn't all that sexy to some of these folk, so the client would have to be computing something like NASCAR aerodynamics, or fractal-based lingerie for Lara Croft, or some hooey to capture Joe 6-pack gamer mindshare.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
In Albany, NY, my numbers for May are;
3.9219 cents per kWh delivery charge x 150 = 588.285 cents = $5.88
plus
6.8590 cents per kWh supply charge x150 = 1028.85 cents = $10.29
For a total of $16.17 per month.
This is usage alone and does not include taxes, stupid little surcharges, etc. Which probably bring the total closer to $25.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Heat from an electric source, inside a closed system, is 100% efficient. That's what he's talling about, and he's exactly right. I'll agree that heat by electricity overall isn't efficient in the least.
Fact is, it really dosen't matter where the electricity came from from his perspective... It could've come from a black box containing a neutron reactor in his basement for all he cares.
If you have to exhaust waste gas to some point near the consumer from his perspective, it's less than 100% efficient. It all depends on the scope.
It sounds like you're saying drug companies should be run like Walmart (focusing on low prices instead of innovation), like European drug companies. If it sounds so easy, you might try your hand at financing the approval of a new drug. You may find it a more expensive and risky proposition than you imagine.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
Those 3.2 GHz processors dissipate too much heat and consume too much power for a laptop computer, as compared to the Intel Roadmap.
I wouldn't exactly expect Sony or Microsoft to support these as-is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were only a matter of time before these applications are released for the next-gen consoles.
Why the hell would MS or Sony support SETI@home or anything similar if they get nothing back in return? Besides, they would then have to explain to their customers why the consoles are using up extra electricity and bandwidth when they are "off."
Now, if the consoles did distributed computing for paying businesses then we might have something here. A 360 for $250 with the condition that it will do data processing when games are not playing might not be that bad of an idea...
In MacOS, there are a few apps that already have the capability to take advantage of distributed computing. 'distcc' lets me offload compiling to several machines. The high end video / dvd apps also support distributed processing for video compression (e.g. converting MiniDV video to MPEG2 for a DVD project).
I would love to be able to let my PowerBook or Mac Mini send compute jobs to a PS3 or XBOX360. I suppose the PS3's cell architecture could really crank out the MPEG2 video.
Hopefully the distributed computing capabilities will trickly down into the consumer apps, like iMovie and iDVD. Because the process for making a DVD is _slow_, and it's only getting slower when moving to HD video and H.264.
But, I would be unlikely to leave a console on, taking power, generating heat and noise, to do seti processing. These consoles are best left OFF when not in use, our energy problems are bad enough already.
Apart from the fact that during gaming itself the Distributed Computing program should be (and probably will, as they do now) in the background doing nothing, and that they shouldn't run 100% but rather a bit lower when the console is idle, I could definitely see this happen if the game manufacturers give bonus levels, more bullets, stronger armour or whatever is good, nice and fun in a game. For the game manufacturers it will generate a ton of free publicity when their game helps curing cancer. The gamers get more fun. And if you don't want that, you turn it off. Now how hard is this?
Bert
Bonus sllogan: Save a live and you get an additional live.
Well now, something I can really comment on ;)
;)
First of all, don't hold your breath. Running distributed computing apps on a console == running arbitrary code. We update these programs all the time behind the scenes. So you will only see these apps on consoles if you see these companies let you run any code you want - not going to happen. Never.
And, if that happens, consoles will all be busy as spam zombies, not as helpers to us. Bad news - that's where all the serious black hat money is these days.
That said, I may or may not know first hand that apps like d.net suck on game consoles, and things like Folding@home rock on them with the minor problem that game consoles don't care so much about accurate floating point, just fast floating point. You can see where that might be a tiny little problem for scientists?
And yes, as many people have mentioned, electricity is not free when the only jobs left are at Walmart. Non-geeks actually care about stuff like that. Um, but you should all be running folding@home! Go, go now
Jim seems to imply that SETI was first *sigh* will they never learn?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Do the "longer play sessions" of a game console continue through the night? This isn't the era of the NES, where 5-hour games didn't have a save feature *cough*Super Mario 3*cough* and players would leave the console on pause overnight. Besides, a TV can be used for only one thing at a time, and if it's not playing games through a console or playing DVDs through a console or other DVD player, it's either off, showing cable TV, or showing satellite TV.
So that by the time you're 65 and have made wise investment choices with your money
"Wise investment choices"? In 1929, what investment choice was "wise"? And if you think the end of oil won't cause a depression, think again.
Distributed.net would be tough to talk a consumer into. Hey here is this really cool distributed computing project where we try and break encryption. Isn't that fun?!
Where is the evidence for all those claims?
Um... I don't know about you, but my TV doesn't have an internet connection, or a few GB of RAM, or an interface that let's me install software onto it much less the capability to do so, or a CPU that runs over a few Ghz. That must be why TV's cost a hundred or so dollars and the average computer doesn't, and why computers aren't called "TV+HDD".
"Hard disks for the most part are now better designed than back in the days"? Seriously? Besides that being an incredibly vague statement in relation to time, stating nothing more than "we've made technological process during human existence", a hard disk is not the only factor in booting a system. You also make it sound like there's no sleep function.
I have no idea how that post got moderated informative... How about "Grammatical Nightmare"?
I'm KEEPING my two cents, dammit!
I am amazed at some of the responses of you slashdotters...
These projects (expecially the medical ones) could yeild very amazing results. I don't know if they WILL but they COULD. Are you telling me that a cure for cancer or alzheimers (sp?) isn't worth a few cycles? Even if it runs at SUPER LOW priority and you still shut off you console when you are not using, multiply that time by the number of consoles sold and they would make a huge contribution.
Take off your tinfoil hats and do something for someone else for once.
So put that in your pipe and grep it
by definition, you cannot do anything with YOUR hardware that the manufacturers don't authorise.
no running distributed projects, no faster than realtime h264 encoding, no scientific applications, nothing!
welcome to the world of ubiquitous DRM.
i'll gladly pay for HW that isn't crippled and illegal to sell (someone should bust their asses for selling deliberately broken merchandise, this is fucking unethical, even by non-slashdot standards).
you keep bringing up what if microsoft made cars... well they do... and so does sony and also nintendo... they only run when they give you the green light. next time you jump into your hotrod, ask the manufacturer for permission to start your car. no, it's not the world's best analogy, but it gets the job done.
too bad our "representatives" aren't. they were bought and paid for long before your great grandparents were born. every 2/4 years, meet your new bosses, same as the old ones. give me a call when democracy means anything other than a veiled dictatorship by the elites/criminals.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
That Sony and microsoft are not already planing to use them for a super computer?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Let's face it, any console's load time is (A) faster than even the 30 seconds of XP, and (B) dominated by the time to read the game from DVD anyway.
So basically there is _no_ reason to leave a console on all the time. You'd save, what? A whole two seconds of Sony logo? Actually, not even that, since it'll "reboot" and display that logo anyway when you put the game DVD in.
So WTH is the point of leaving a console on?
And how would they use all those "unused resources"?
Require the user to put a SETI DVD in when they're done with the current game? That saves time... how? Unlike just leaving a PC on, here we're talking _extra_ time and effort to start that distributed computing crap on your console.
Require the user to mod their console? Yeah, some of us are sooo just waiting to invest effort, pay money, void warranty, and potentially ruin compatibility with future games, just to run some pointless useless distributed computing project. Not.
Basically, while I normally do define myself as a "terminal nerd", it's stuff like this that makes me ashamed of that label. Some people have exactly _zero_ grasp on reality. It's stuff that assumes that everyone will surely invest time, effort or money in some stupidity that has _no_ use other than "hur hur hur, we're soo l33t and k3wl, because look what arcane stuff we can do". It so lacks any kind of reality check, such as "well, and what's in it for the user, then", it's not even funny.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"And what about the XBOX,Playstation 2, Gamecube Linux communities? There are probably thousands of people who have modded their game consoles to run linux. If they take the time and energy to mod their game consoles for Linux, who says there won't be people to mod them for Distributed Computing?"
The reality check being: "... out of almost 100,000,000 game consoles sold."
We're talking... what? A whole 0.01% of the market? (That is, generously assuming that "probably thousands" to be a whole 10,000 modded consoles for Linux.)
Or, what, a whole 0.1% increase (or so) over the already existing PC user base?
That's the kind of reality check that this kind of projects misses by a mile. The percentage of users who will take a console apart just to brag about running Linux on it is so insignifficant, you can't really use that market segment for much.
And certainly they can't extrapolate it to mean "hey, we can get X gazillion bazillion packets processed if we ran it on _all_ consoles ever sold." Because that minority is more like lost in the decimals than being _all_ the console users.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Consoles fairly/unfairly get branded as vacuous playthings for those that don't like reading.
If say MS bundled a protein folding app with Live it'd be good PR for MS and unite the live users with a warm fuzzy feeling.
It would also get some nice coverage in print, in the non-gaming press and hopefully raise awareness that gaming and consoles aren't 'just' about violence and most console owners are pleasant, responsible people who contribute to society.
I dunno - just seems that the initial investment to get this off the ground is so low, it seems a shame not to give it a try - just give it a pretty screen saver and I'll be happy.
Actually if Live had some sortof RSS/widget functionality then people would be more likely to leave their xbox on and that'd leave plenty of CPU free for the Heavy Folding.
1. SETI on a PC is something which requires practically zero effort. You download it, start it, that's it. (And then, if you're not a geek, go nag one as to why your computer is so slow now.)
It's easy to get people to do stuff that requires no effort. If just clicking here once makes my score go up ever after, heck, sure. Why not?
On a console you're asking him to mod it or stick a SETI@Home CD in it after each game. You may find people a lot less inclined to do that.
2. Score in a game is something people take pride in not because of some fascination with numbers, but because it's something to compare _personal_ achievement with someone else.
People aren't fascinated with score as such, as some people try to mis-represent it (e.g., when whining about "numberchasers"), but because it can be used to say "_I_ am x% better than you at this game." I'm level 50, you're level 37. I'm exactly 13 levels "better" than you are.
SETI scores and benchmark scores are often used to the same effect: to reflect a personal achievement. "My computer can process x% more packets than yours." And make no mistake, there's a whole willy-waving mine-is-bigger-than-yours market of compulsive upgraders and overclockers. People have bought a cascade cooling (basically refrigerator engine, more than one stage) rig just to brag about having a bigger 3DMark score. But again, the underlying reason is not a fascination with numbers as such, but a way to quantify "I'm l33ter than thou."
Now throw it in a world where everyone has the same CPU, can process exactly as many packets per hour as any other PS3, and the only score difference is how much time you left it running. What's to brag about that? Where's the _personal_ achievement?
I think you may find people a lot less interested in that.
3. Snide remarks about Joe 6-pack and such are good and fine (if nothing else, to illustrate the whole "I'm better than you" thing I was talking about.) But it's missing the real point by a wide margin.
The point being that it's something ultimately useless and pointless. And see point 1: you can get people to run pointless stuff a lot easier if it doesn't actually involve any effort on their part. You may find the exact same people a lot less willing to do that pointless stuff, regardless of whether it's SETI or computing lingerie for Lara, when it does require active intervention to run.
Is it possible to make it require no intervention. Well, yes, if it comes built-in from the manufacturer. Whether that'll ever happen, that's a different question. But still, it has nothing to do with _what_ it's calculating there,
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
> district heating
But I think that if you try to burn the district to heat your house, some of the residents will become irate.
I would stick with wood, coal, or oil, personally.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I don't mind paying electricity for a console running 24/7. However, the last PS 2 I had burned out 3 times in 7 years. And that's playing games. Considering these new consoles are going to cost $500 and up, what's the incentive for me to put my console up there, just to get burned out in even less than a year, forcing me to dish up another $500? All in the name of a 'good cause'? Don't think so. Not until it's proven these things last longer than a year or so from 'normal use', let alone 'heavy use'.