Harvesting & Reusing Idle Computer Cycles

Hustler writes "More on the University of Texas grid project's mission to integrate numerous, diverse resources into a comprehensive campus cyber-infrastructure for research and education. This article examines the idea of harvesting unused cycles from compute resources to provide this aggregate power for compute-intensive work."

Comments

Spambots

[HermanAB]

are harvesting spare cycles all the time. I don't think there are much cycles left over anymore!

So Is This The New Enron....

[Anonymous Coward]

storing our unused CPU cycles in a data warehouse somewhere so that, when a user pays enough, they can buy the needed cycles?

Like water, like electricity, like natural gas and shares of Enron stock?

Spyware, Adware & Malware

[Krankheit]

I thought that was what spyware was for? When you are not using your computer, and while you are using your computer too, let your computer send out e-mail and perform security audits on other Microsoft Windows computers! In exchange, you will get free, unlimited access to special money saving offers for products from many reputable companies, such as Pfizer.

Re:electricity

[Smiffa2001]

What would be amusing was if global warming research was being done with the 'spare' cycles:

"Sir, we've completed the study and all the results are in. It's pretty shocking..."
"Go on..."
"Well, since we started, it's gotten much worse compared to before. The rate of change increased. We think it's the increased power use..."
"D'Oh!!!"

NOTE: Scientific accuracy might be impaired during the length of this feature. Thank you for reading.

Re:Virtual Dual Processing

[Anonymous Coward]

Rapper Ludacris is working on virtual dual processing? Doesn't really seem like his forte. ... Oh, you meant ludicrous . My mistake.

Green fancy-dancy!

[TheStonepedo]

The voltage from my idle memory cycles goes through a series of capacitors and ICs to make my fancy-dancy lights blink so I won't have to buy new computers and waste power - and all of this is within a 133 MHz underclocked pentium box with 32 MB ram running linux.

I'm saving the world!

Re:Electricity vs cost of more machines and labor

[Alwin Henseler]

"The proper decision would balance these three (and other factors) in defining a portfolio of computing assets that can cost-effectively handle both baseline and peak computing loads."

You're probably right, but oh what a beautiful line of marketing-speak... If you happen to work in management or sales somewhere, write this baby down!

Re:Wrong

[big tex]

Using the Lap-Burn-O-Meter (TM) as a gauge of overall power consumption with my Powerbook G4, I can definitely say that higher cpu cycle activities (encoding 1hr AAC files, for instance) increase power usage.

I could probably do something fancier by monitoring power draw with it unplugged, but my balls would be fried before I could tabulate the accurate data.

Re:Sure about that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, just imagine the karmatic synergy, not to mention product entropy, attainable from both using waste cycles and recylcing them!

Re:electricity

[seanadams.com]

You forgot the bit where you sell the cluster, and then lease it back from the company you sold it to - that way it comes out of the monthly current budget, and not the capital account!

Re:Electricity vs cost of more machines and labor

[Poltras]

Worse, they contribue to global entropy, thus reducing universe lifetime... What are we doing?

Wow, I've never heard of this idea before...

[Jugalator]

Hmm, where have I heard about this before again?
Exciting to read a paper on this fanastic new idea.

Re:How about extra GPU cycles?

[Duncan3]

Wow, why didn't we do that... oh wait, we did, years ago in fact. (everyone else thought of it too)

GPU don't have real math... yet. So instead of Folding@home you get "tossed on the bed"@home. Which is unfortunately useless.

Stay tuned tho. :)

Re:Electricity vs cost of more machines and labor

[haakondahl]

Huh? Whatever, sign me up for two.