Aura: Harnessing the Power of IoT Devices For Distributed Computing

An anonymous reader points out that a computer science research team from the University of Alabama has put together a new architecture called "Aura," which lets people make use of excess computing power from various smart devices scattered throughout their homes. Ragib Hasan, the team's leader, says this scheme could be integrated with smartphones, letting you offload CPU-intensive tasks to your home devices. He also anticipates the ability to sell off excess capacity — like how people with solar panels can sometimes sell the excess energy they harvest. Alternately, they could be allocated to a distributed computing project of the homeowner's choice, like Seti@home. Of course, several obstacles need to be solved before a system like Aura can be used — smart devices run on a variety of operating systems and often communicate only through a narrow set of protocols. Any unifying effort would also need careful thought about security and privacy matters.

Comments

IoT != compute

[TheGratefulNet]

this is stupid. no. just no. ok?

iot is all about low power, dedicated and it is NOT YOUR HOSTING PLATFORM for running your bullshit on.

iot has enough trouble with weak or non-existent security and the devices are just not meant to accept 'workloads' from you.

someone has been smoking from the beowulf bowl...