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MacResearch Introduces OpenMacGrid
Drew McCormack writes "MacResearch.org has just introduced OpenMacGrid. It is a distributed computing grid similar to SETI@home, but unlike other networks, it is built up entirely of Macs utilizing Xgrid, and access is unrestricted. Anyone with Mac OS X 10.4 can donate cycles, and any scientist with a reasonable project can burn cycles."
How about we call each node in the OpenMacGrid a MacGriddle?
I do hope their website isn't representative of their grid's performance...
with a beowulf cluster of these... they might even handle the rush from slashdot.
This only works in a LAN. Every single frame of a modern movie requires gigabytes of texture data etc. etc... It's not something you can send over the Internet.
.: Max Romantschuk
So, Xgrid-experts, what kind of permissions does an application like this have? Is it sandboxed somehow?
/tmp or ~/Public/Drop Box or whatever with garbage until you run out of disk, or some other annoying things. I won't say "nothing major", because that depends on what you've got that's readable or writable by others. I'm also not wearing my expert hat, so it's entirely possible that I'm unaware of some way that Xgrid jobs could 0wnz0r you.
Xgrid jobs run as user 'nobody', which is decently safe, with process limits so it can't forkbomb you to death. A rogue job could fill up
You still need to trust OpenMacGrid to keep these bad jobs off the grid.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
From my experience of the online Apple-using community, this entire thing will be used purely to predict when Apple will be releasing new shiny things to buy. Forget about global warming - good God, man! There could be a minor iPod update next Tuesday!
How useful can it be to be locked into one OS? How hard is it to make a commandline program and then a Cocoa interface, that way you can get everyone and still have a pretty window and widget for OS X users.
OpenMacGrid uses Xgrid, which is Mac-only. It isn't something new they've made: it's built-in to Mac OS X. You ask "how hard is it...", and the answer is "A lot harder than just using what's already available."
Also, the Xgrid agent doesn't have a pretty window. It's a background daemon.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Isn't that like expecting that a public airstrip claiming "unrestricted access" be accessible to submarines, too?
Practical limitations may apply without something violating a notion of "unrestricted." Sort of like how unrestricted Internet access in your home still requires you to have a computer or other suitable device; you can't just plug the Internet into your arm.
Maybe, instead of everybody making their own little grid system...
I don't think you fully understand what you're talking about.
For starters, BOINC is not a separate grid. It's a framework and client for many grids. BOINC users can (and do) contribute to many different projects including your "established projects" like Folding@Home and SETI@Home, and including many of the other grids you've listed. Many of the others you listed do exactly the kind of jobs you're calling for, like disease research.
Also, you seem to think that all grid computing projects are interchangeable, and that just isn't so. They may work with different data, or using different methods; they may not have the same requirements for job submission; they may operate on vastly different scales. Basically, they're suited for different research needs. A nice thing about OpenMacGrid, for example, is that researchers can take the same Xgrid job they've been using on their tiny network and send it to a public grid without much, if any modification.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
"Laziness is an optimisation protocol"
The comments so far have (mostly) overlooked the main point of just why the OpenMacGrid is different: it's *open*. That means that scientists, even PhD students like myself that want to run jobs using far greater numbers of nodes than the clusters (beowolf or otherwise) at our home institutions will now have a means to do so. Most such projects have neither the resources nor the capabilities to create their own custom cross-platform clients like those mentioned from other distributed computing projects.
OpenMacGrid (or just OMG, I guess) uses XGrid, which is built-in to every OSX 10.4 distribution and acts just like any other job queue manager, except it's even easier. So, the whole process of writing a distributed computing project becomes far simpler as well.
Finally, the OMG it doesn't matter if the OMG is cross-platform running on proprietary hardware: so is every other cluster that I as a scientist have ever had access to. The SGI cluster is proprietary, and to an extent so is the Linux machine at our High-Performance Computing lab on campus. And, if you're thinking about it being non-cross-platform from the client side, well, you're probably not thinking differently anyway, so just go download Folding@Home.
*most people never really think about the consequences*