Anyone here do any Distributed Computing?

[Robin Hood]

Just curious if anyone does any Distributed Computing? If you want to learn more about it check out

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

I think there are enough of us here to start a kick ass team. We have a team from work that does the protein folding. I do SETI already on my own, but would drop that to go with a TNMC Team effort. Basically you would download a small client about 5MB, then pick your project and join the team. Your computer goes out and picks up the stuff it needs to do, does the work, uploads the info, downloads another package to work on.

I have 4 PC's that do this pretty much around the clock, it really doesn't eat up performance cause I have set up the client to do the work while I am away from the computer. I think putting all the idle CPU's to work doing some of these projects is a great idea, and who knows you might be the one that makes the big breakthrough.

[Robin Hood]

Here is a distributed computing project that was completed back in 2001, the stats on it are pretty amazing. I am not a math geek by any means of the word, but this is just cool to think they can actually figure this shit out.

PiHex was a distributed computing project to calculate specific bits of Pi, the greatest calculation of Pi ever successfully attempted. 1,246 contributors used idle time slices on almost two thousand computers to make its calculations. They made use of Bellard's formula, a faster version of the BBP formula, with the algorithm discovered by Bailey, Borwein, and Plouffe in 1995.

After setting three records, calculating 76 digits past in each case (and 3 before), the five trillionth bit, the forty trillionth bit, and the quadrillionth bit, the project ended September 11, 2000.

PiHex didn't conduct their task the customary way, using the digits 0 through 9 (Base 10). Instead, they calculated Pi in binary (or Base 2, i.e., using only 0s and 1s).

Here are the final digit strings for each of the three calculations:

* Binary digits of Pi from five trillion to five trillion seventy-six (completed August 30, 1998):

001111110010001010111001100111100110001111001000010110101100101111001

* Binary digits of Pi from forty trillion to forty trillion seventy-six (February 9, 1999):

0000011111001111111110011011100011101000011101011001001111100000

* Binary digits of Pi from one quadrillion to one quadrillion seventy-six (September 11, 2000):

0011000100001011010110000011010011100101101101100000111010011

Therefore, the smallest-value digit of Pi in binary known to man is 1 at position 1,000,000,000,000,076 (one quadrillion seventy-six) or 1015+76.

To calculate five trillion digits took 13,500 CPU hours, utilizing 25 computers from 6 different countries. Forty trillion digits required 84,500 hours and 126 computers from 18 different countries. The highest calculation, one quadrillion digits, took 1.2 million computer hours and 1,734 computers from 56 different countries. Total resources: 1,885 computers in 80 unique countries donated 1,298,000 CPU hours. The average computer that was used to calculate would have taken 148 years to complete the calculations alone.

While the PiHex project calculated the highest number of Pi digits ever attempted in any base, second place is held by Professor Yasumasa Kanada who derived the 1.2411 trillionth digit in base 10 (which is 5).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHex

[Captain Gary]

I'm doing the Folding at Home. Team XPS, team #80856.

Currently have 3 machines running FAH, hope to get 2 or 3 more going this month.

I was previously involved with a weather simulation that was using the distributed computing concept. All for a good cause, plus some good natured competition.

folding.stanford.edu/

www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=Tech_Talk_XPS&thread.id=7308

Gary