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Harvesting & Reusing Idle Computer Cycles

Posted by Hemos on from the making-good-use-of-time-and-resources dept.

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."

3 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. electricity by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does anyone realize that running a CPU at 100% takes more electricity than running a CPU at 10%?

    "wasted compute cycles" aren't free. I would assert they're not even "wasted".

    1. Re:electricity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The point is that they're not being used, and that they can be used for research. From the point of view of the researchers, who need these cycles, they are wasted.

  2. CPU power consumption by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/cual_core _athlon-19.html

    60-100W difference between idle and full power consumption. That is not an insignificant amount of power.