[LINK] Worldwide Community Grid

[Tom Koltai]

Please excuse the top posting.

I did some numbers Linkers.

According to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS#Records

Quote/
Distributed computing uses the Internet to link personal computers to
achieve more FLOPS:

* Folding at Home is, as of April 2010, sustaining over 6.2 PFLOPS("x86"
this is the standard other distributed computers in this section use,
which is different from "native") [13], the first computing project of
any kind to cross the 1,2,3,4 & 5 petaFLOPS milestone. This level of
performance is primarily enabled by the cumulative effort of a vast
array of PlayStation 3, CPU, and powerful GPU units.[14]

* The entire BOINC network averages about 5.1 PFLOPS as of April 21,
2010.[15]

* As of April 2010[update], MilkyWay at Home computes at over 1.6 PFLOPS,
with a large amount of this work coming from GPUs.[16]

* As of April 2010[update], SETI at Home, which began in 1999, computes
data averages more than 730 TFLOPS.[17]

* As of April 2010[update], Einstein at Home is crunching more than 210
TFLOPS.[18]

* As of April 2010[update], GIMPS, which began in 1996, is sustaining 44
TFLOPS.[19]
/Quote

It wouldn't seem that this initiative was about the combined power of
distributed laptop computers with CPU's apportioned on a protem ad-hoc
chaos theory basis.

P2P Distributed Computer 1,500,000 users @ 8000 TPS = 12,000,000,000 (12
GF) Gigaflops (1.5 million laptop PC's)

By comparison:

Single NVIDIA (GPU based) CUDA Processor 1,000,000,000,000 (1 TF)
Teraflop $1,600
Retail Baby Supercomputer 4,000,000,000,000 (4 TF's) Teraflops $10,000 
IBM's own Roadrunner Supercomputer 1,000,000,000,000,000 TPS (1 PF)
Petaflop	

Cost to build a computer that can carry out the same number of
transactions (on a dedicated processor with 1GB ram) using the CUDA
processor (split into VM's) is less than $180,000.

It would seem to me that the exercise was a data collection exercise by
IBM, whom, to date, have not been involved in mass crowd sourcing social
networking events and may feel that they are missing the boat.

Or, possibly, yet another methodology of decreasing taxation to increase
"margin".

A little transparent, (imho).

Tom

References:
CUDAA 1RU Colfax http://www.colfax-intl.com/ms_tesla.asp?M=102

Login required
High Performance Grid Computing and Security through Load Balancing
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4769429
Overlapping Non-dedicated Clusters Architecture
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4769416

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of 
> stephen at melbpc.org.au
> Sent: Saturday, 11 September 2010 12:40 AM
> To: link at anu.edu.au; oz-teachers at rite.ed.qut.edu.au
> Subject: [LINK] Worldwide Community Grid
> 
> 
> Solve the global water crisis from your laptop
> 
> Friday, 10 September 2010
> 
> Help solve the global water crisis by leaving your laptop 
> alone for a few 
> hours and letting it join the millions of other computers on the 
> Worldwide Community Grid.
> 
> This was one of the projects announced on September 7 by IBM which 
> sponsors a global community of personal computers known as 
> the Worldwide 
> Community Grid
> 
> Scientists can tap into the idle processing power of computers on the 
> grid and then use it to develop water filtering technology, research 
> treatments for water-related diseases and clean up polluted 
> water sources.
> 
> By using the processing power provided by the 1.5 million computers 
> linked into the grid, scientists will be able to perform online 
> environmental simulations, crunch numbers and pose 
> hypothetical scenarios 
> faster than before.
> 
> While networks of personal computers have previously been used for 
> projects such as searching for extraterrestrial life, this is 
> the first 
> time a community of personal computers tackle our global 
> environmental 
> problems.
> 
> Scientists from the University of Virginia will use the Worldwide 
> Community Grid to gain a better understanding of the effects of 
> agricultural, commercial and industrial actions on Chesapeake 
> Bay on the 
> East Coast of the USA, and in Brazil scientists are using the grid to 
> seek a cure to waterborne disease schistosomiasis.
> 
> In China researchers from Tsinghua University in cooperation with 
> scientists in Australia and Switzerland are also using the 
> grid to seek 
> ways to purify contaminated water.
> 
> Computer users can become part of the global community by registering 
> online at http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org and installing a 
> free secure 
> program which runs on Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, 
> when a user's 
> computer is idle or between keystrokes the program requests 
> data from the 
> Worldwide Community Grid.
> 
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/solve-the-global-water-crisis-
from-your-laptop-2075548.html  (snip)

--

Cheers,
Stephen
_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
Link at mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link