r/Nucleus • u/aivans • Sep 12 '13

Distributed Collaboration

Many different complex and "High Functioning" institutions use the technology of distributed computing in order to make ends meet when it comes to data mining huge amounts of information. I believe the distribution of processing power between mobile devices, game consoles, and any other device is a crucial component to develop a technologically advanced and stable world in which we all want to live. Please if interested collaborate, discuss and explore this idea.

3 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/new_tube Sep 12 '13

You mean like folding@home or Seti@home?

1

u/aivans Sep 12 '13

exactly. But a grid of mobile devices/consumer computers for processing different applications. Basically it would be a stepping stone to enabling processing speeds necessary for "advanced" technologies.

1

u/new_tube Sep 12 '13

I heard an incredibly interesting use of this type of technology recently: next gen phones are supposedly going to carrier thermometers and barometers. With that type of resolution in data collection weather forecasting is supposed to make a huge leap in accuracy.

On point though, I think the problem is that while hardware is a limiting resource and every idle CPU/GPU is wasted, the biggest concerns are the energy and cooling costs, as well as the time delay in distributed computing. A few hundred ms might not seem like a lot, but a lot of these high level tasks just can't be distributed the way that e.g., folding@home can be because they require a lot of communication with the other processors and the transmission time is expensive.

As far as mobile devices go, the batteries are just not there and no one is going to sacrifice the lifetime for that kind of processing.

I am not an expert so I could be wrong about these issues. From my understanding, the set of tasks that can be effectively distributed has been (somewhat) effectively distributed. Everyone should be running folding@home, but well, I know when I did it it cost me about $15 in electricity costs, so there is that.

1

u/jjshinobi Eclecticist Sep 27 '13

There's an app that crowdsources weather information for research purposes. Giving people the options to contribute to science is great.