Re: Turning the Internet into One Massive Machine

A Davidson (ajd@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca)
Tue, 12 Jan 1999 20:12:08 -0700 (MST)

On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 CALYK@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 1/12/99 3:43:37 PM Central Standard Time,
> Doug.Bailey@ey.com writes:
>
> There already is something like that, caled Distributed.net, I believe there
> are 800,000 computers signed on, and its basically a small program that
> continuously runs using the cpu you're not using, so its always out of the
> way, and while you're online it trades informtation packets. I believe the

There is a huge difference between the distributed computing which organizations such as distributed.net and seti@home do and parallel processing, which is what the group in the press release appear to be claiming.
Distributed Computing is useful for solving a limited subset of problems which can be decomposed into small chunks, processed elsewhere, and the results reasembled. It is a 'loosely coupled' system where each machine is distinct from one another.
Parallel processing is a 'tightly coupled' arcitechture, where there is one machine, and many processors. For network parallel processing to be a reality, extremely high network speeds are needed, as the network acts like a system bus in a single computer.

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| Aaron Davidson         | ajd@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca                |
| Silicon Creek Software | http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~davidson/ |
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