Ironworks Gaming Forum - Lotsa little computers = 1 supercomputer?

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- - Lotsa little computers = 1 supercomputer? (http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96616)

Anyone ever take part in anything like this?

Quote:

The Grid MP Global @ grid.org is a virtual supercomputer that can be harnessed to power computational research and analysis projects on a massive scale. By combining millions of online CPUs worldwide to work on extremely large computational projects, problems can be solved more quickly and less expensively than by conventional methods. Now any networked computer can help fuel research and projects that previously may have required a bank of supercomputers or a hundred years to complete.

You download a program that works as your screensaver & sends its results back to a central machine, so each PC is chewing on a tiny piece of a big problem. I just wondered if anyone had any problems doing it -- machine locking up, does it gather any personal data, etc?

It's not the first time I see something like this. SETI has something like this too.

yeah i read on it.. as much as i would like to join in.. i dont think my housemate would like to see the computers on all day for it. electricity bills you know :(

One such program : BOINC, my friend has one computer that runs it 24/7... :D

These programs work well because they are able to get people to give them computing time for free. Obviously, a million PCs would be more expensive than the equivalent number of supercomputers if the lab had to pay for all of them.

One implementation I've heard of this type of computing is a program at USC that uses the computers in the campus computer lab to work on earthquake simulations whenever they are not in use by students.