Distributed Computing

[BigV]

Originally Posted by breakingnews

I guess I was just thinking fatalistically here: How big will shared computing get? Yes, transferring a small packet (or several small packets) of data is minute relative to your typical Internet usage (or is it?). But as more and more computers come online to serve such a function, there's more opportunity to bottle up what's available. What if a program decides your computer can handle two, three or 500 simultaneous calculations, or staggers them so there's a constant stream of data flowing in and out?

A continuous flow would be ok, given that it did not impair the main function of the computer. If it did, then I would have to step in and readjust it's allocation of resources, namely the cpu cycles. I could also adjust the connection method by only permitting it to connect when I gave it explicit permission to do so.

You see, the cpu cycles "cost" the same whether they're doing an actual calculation or not. Might as well put them to some useful purpose. There isn't a perfect analogy I can think of, but this is close. Imagine an escalator. It's moving up, or down, continuously. It moves at a constant rate irrespective of the number of people on it. Within it's design limits, it costs the same to run it full or empty or anything in between. The cpu works that way too. It checks it's "pipeline" for any work every tiny fraction of a second and does what it's asked to do. By the way, all those dazzling megahertz and gigahertz refer to the number of times per second that the cpu checks to see if there's some math to be done. Millions (mega) or Billions (!) (giga) of times each second it checks. The VAST majority of cpus are starving for work.

Originally Posted by breakingnews

It's not increased use of computers, it's more efficient use. What if everyone in a community shared a handful of cars? Carmakers could only make their money by building more expensive, powerful vehicles able to tolerate the extensive use (hypothetically 24 hrs a day) and reducing car life to, say, 2 or 3 years, but that would severely restrict their annual volume growth. Or, it could resemble an erie outsourcing scenario: why buy a Cray when you have thousands of cheap Dells - which you don't even have to pay for - at your disposal via network?

Bold prediction: Won't happen.

NO trend in technology has shown any dimunition in the rate of acceleration wrt speed, size, quantity, capacity, etc. Certainly, there is a validity to the concept of "a sufficiency of computational power" (I guess) but what has always happened is that when a previously unreachable boundary has been crossed, it has always led people to wonder what was over their "new" horizon. There will be an steady desire to know the answer to ten or a hundred more decimal places of accuracy, or to have the answer faster. As those limits in turn are reached, new "must reach" horizons are revealed.

Newton's aphorism, "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." has some miles in it still.

Originally Posted by breakingnews

These are extreme examples. Admittedly I do not know much about this subject. I was bored at work and dreaming of the apacolypse in hopes that at the very least, my editor might burst into flames and die. Just being a royal pain in the ass.

It could happen...
http://theshadowlands.net/spon.htm

But it would be a mixed blessing, considering the additional carbon load. I looked everywhere and could not find a calculator to do the math. But overall, I think I could reduce our family's load by a little more than a tonne.
http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/oneto...lish/index.asp

[russotto]

Originally Posted by BigV

NO trend in technology has shown any dimunition in the rate of acceleration wrt speed, size, quantity, capacity, etc.

CPU speed and transistor density seem to be hitting a wall about now.

Removable media hit a really solid wall a while back, and now it's far behind, leaving lots of people with drives they are unable to easily back up.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by russotto

CPU speed and transistor density seem to be hitting a wall about now.

Witness the invention of latches from HP from 90 nanometer transistor technology to 3 nanometers for the same function.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/pr...5/050201a.html

Originally Posted by russotto

Removable media hit a really solid wall a while back, and now it's far behind, leaving lots of people with drives they are unable to easily back up.

Witness the development of blu-ray cd/dvd media increasing the capacity of discs

http://www.blu-ray.com/info/