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Science Technology

Most Powerful Computer in Canada - for a Day 254

Posted by timothy from the fleeting-fame dept.
An anonymous reader writes "On Nov. 4, 18 Canadian universities and will create the most powerful computer in Canada for a day to solve an important computational chemistry question in one day -- a task that would normally take six years to complete." Here is more information on the temporary supercomputer available at the project's home page and at UofG's News.
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Most Powerful Computer in Canada - for a Day More

Most Powerful Computer in Canada - for a Day

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  • Westley Crusher (Score:3, Funny)

    by CatWrangler ( 622292 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:00PM (#4590040) Journal
    On Nov. 4, 18 Canadian universities and will create the most powerful computer in Canada for a day.

    There goes Will Wheaton, showing off again. That bastard. I thought Picard got rid of that young twerp once and for all.

  • hmmmm (Score:4, Funny)

    by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me@brandywinehund r e d .org> on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:00PM (#4590042) Journal
    Sounds like they want to play DoomIII (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/03/15202 40&mode=nested&tid=127) alpha witha good frame rate.

  • Dup (Score:3, Informative)

    by HRbnjR ( 12398 ) <chris@hubick.com> on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:02PM (#4590054) Homepage
    This story is a Duplicate [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Dup (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Lshmael ( 603746 )
      Considering the project starts tomorrow, and this story has two completely different links (including one to the official site which has a FAQ with answers to what people posted on Slashdot), no, it is not a duplicate. A followup, perhaps.

    • Re:Dup (Score:4, Funny)

      by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:45PM (#4590315)
      quick, everyone go to the original article and post the highly moderated posts as your own in this one!

  • Beer Cooled Supercomputer (Score:5, Funny)

    by Myriad ( 89793 ) <myriad@the[ ]d.com ['bso' in gap]> on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:02PM (#4590057) Homepage
    On Nov. 4, 18 Canadian universities and will create the most powerful computer in Canada for a day to solve an important computational chemistry question in one day

    Coincidentally, on Nov 4, Canadian Universities will create the world's first beer-cooled supercomputer, "Drunk Blue".

    When asked why beer, the researchers involved explained that it was both plentiful and "what else would you use Blue for?".

  • The first test has commenced... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:03PM (#4590068)
    Can it survive with the Slashdot effect?

  • hey wait a sec! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MoceanWorker ( 232487 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:03PM (#4590071) Homepage
    imagine a beowulf clu... err.. wait.. dammit..

  • ChemEx(TM) (Score:5, Funny)

    by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:04PM (#4590075) Homepage
    For when you absolutely, positively need that chemistry problem solved by the next day.
    • Sad thing is, I know people that have been told that. Heh. 64 nodes that take 3 months to make 1 calculation....... unbelievable (and these are no slowpokes, 1ghz, 1.6ghz chips)......
  • They should have built it before they announced it. That way, maybe they could survive the low-grade Sunday Slashdotting.

  • Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    >>18 Canadian universities and will create

    If the anonymous submitter happens to be from one of the 18 universities, I don't have much hope for this.

    Unless they're trying to analyze the sentence structure of All Your Base.
  • This is cool...the Edmonton Controller [ualberta.ca] appears to be hovering over Hudson's Bay.

    It's not only Canada's most powerful supercomputer, it's the only one controlled from space.

    • Actually.. and I'm surprised you don't know this...

      It's running out of a former military base UNDERNEATH hudsons bay... the entrance of the 500 mile tunnel to the base is somewhere in the canadian shield.

      Strange that they let some university types in there...

  • As this will asked anyway, from the FAQ (Score:5, Informative)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:09PM (#4590115) Journal
    "Why didn't they just make a client program for distributed computing so the entire country/world could help out?" (From a Slashdot posting.)

    First, we had to keep CISS-1 simple enough for us to manage. Second, the computational chemistry application has significant resource requirements (e.g., large memory, significant disk space, etc.). Third, we are not interested in "cycle stealing" for CISS-1; the machines that we use will be dedicated to the task at hand. The rest of the FAQ is here [ualberta.ca].

    *** and now to the commercials, for the final time, here is an analysis of the Slashdot effect [openchallenge.org].

    • Probably for security.. The largest and longest running projects such as SETI have had to deal with CHEATING and haking of thier work units.. By keeping it in house and running mosting on HIGH end trusted systems they can still get the job done for less money and quickly.
      • Because of the complexity of the molecules, the energy needs to be calculated at many thousand points. Each point may require several hours of computing time on a modern workstation. In computational terms, this is an ideal parallel problem which can be distributed onto as many processors as points needed and is therefore ideally suited for the CISS Experiment

        Yes, security (and data/result integrity) is probably one of the main reasons why they want it to be run in a trusted enviroment. Otherwise it seems that this would be a good case for a massively distributed solution (although apparently the application required big amounts of memory, and maybe bandwidth). But the dataintegrity in non-trusted network probably makes it impossible. I don't know if anyone has come up with a good solution to overcome the dataintegrity problems - other than performing occasional checks (running the same task on multiple machines) to find the forged results. In a non-trusted environment, you might soon find a big percent of the cpu cycles used just for dataintegrity checks.

  • In Other News... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:09PM (#4590117)
    Canada is clustering all of their fishing ships to create the most powerful Canadian navy yet.

    • Re:In Other News... (Score:5, Informative)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:15PM (#4590454) Homepage Journal
      While it's fun to joke about Canada, it should be noted that when it's actually needed (i.e. not against a bunch of two bit little shithole nations, or just to continue to push a military-export policy) Canada quickly becomes a military powerhouse.

      "The Canadian Navy began the Second World War with half a dozen vessels and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian Soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the War with the World's 3rd largest Navy and the fourth largest Air Force. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had in previous times.......In film, Hollywood abandoned the notion of a separate Canadian identity"
      • With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.

        I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....

        For a country with some of the best individual soldiers in the world, we've been treating our military like absolute crap for far too long for it not to show :(

        But I guess that's okay as long as our PM gets his new jets.... @@!%%$!!

        • Re:In Other News... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @08:16PM (#4591164) Homepage Journal
          With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.

          Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.

          The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry- An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road. Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.

          While we hear constant cries about the "dangerous new world", the reality is that the classic militarism of yesteryear is a bygone thing: The US has nominated itself, and achieved by default, global policeman. Though this role is costly to her, it was a self-pursued role, and comes with a healthy bonus of being able to promote and pursue her own self-interests. Of course, simpleton morons like Pat Buchanan [thestar.com] would try to cast such a role not as a self-serving role, but as a role which we should all send a cheque in the mail.

          I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....

          I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation. The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens. Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible. The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters, it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners. Again, take a close look at the $ vested interests who are looking at lining up at the trough.

          We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US', just as the military of every other NATO countries does. I'm perfectly fine with that. We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled. Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.

          • the gulf war started I believe in august when saddam entered kuwait. desert shield started almost immediately, desert storm was a couple of weeks in january.

            I do believe that the gulf war has to go down in the history books as one of the most quickly resolved major conflicts in history (not I said major conflicts, I'm sure there are tons of conflicts that were settled in a day)

            as for canucks, in my house we make fun all the time of the canadian military and their tank but I never fail to remember that in every conflict the US has played a part the canadians were right there with us.

            also, there were movies made about canada's part in ww2 I've seen them.
          • Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.

            I'm curious what background you speak from....

            I ask because it takes more than having a pile of brasshats in Ottawa at NDHQ to make us ready to deploy a worthwhile force. Failing procurement and training programs ensure that our vehicles are worn out (Sea King, Leopard, Iltis, F-18) and that our troops don't spend enough time training in primary skills. THESE losses alone are enough to say that six months is not enough lead time to deal with the situation (pardon me for being annoyed, but we had MONTHS to wind up for Afghanistan too and we couldn't even get the right camouflage.... so don't expect me to believe we can mass mobilize or even moderately mobilize in any useful way in short order given our current state of affairs).

            The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry-

            Or from anyone who comprehends how hobbled our military now is. Or from anyone who comprehends the role of an active and sufficient military in maintaining foreign policy impact.

            An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road.

            As opposed to those who think that our guys regularly being killed by bad equipment (specifically of the flying or not really variety) is acceptable? I'm not talking about billions of dollars of stockpiled cruise missiles. I'm talking about subs that don't leak, rescue and military choppers that don't fall out of the sky from metal fatigue, camouflage of the right colour, night vision gear in appropriate volumes, vaccines that aren't tainted for the troops, enough logistics capacity to deploy to trouble spots even one battalion and supporting elements and maintain them there, etcetera etcetera. No wazoo high tech anywehre in sight.

            Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.

            Yeah, right. And can't be deployed to a trouble spot without sticking out there thumbs.... and can't stay there long without foreign logistics support... and can't stay there as a force because of a lack of combat soldiers.... and can't keep the subs at sea because they are falling apart... and can't keep the planes and choppers in the air due to fatigue and age of the airframes.....

            I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation.

            Possibly true.

            The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens.

            No, they had plenty of warning they were going. They had yet to procure the batch of desert camo (which arrived AFTER their return more than six months later). They asked the US "Could you provide us with enough camo?". The US said "send us the sizes, we'll ship you what you need in 7-10 days for the same cost or less than what you'd pay for the homegrown stuff". Guess what? We didn't care enough for our soldiers to spend the money. What was the official reason from NDHQ? Morale problems caused by wearing foreign uniforms.

            Let me say that again: Morale problems. BS! BS! BS! Every infanteer I've talked to (and it has been quite a few) has said "if it made me harder to see or be seen or maybe be hit, I'd gladly take camo from anyone...".

            Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible.

            A further example of your lack of clear thought. They effectively (by using paint) damaged their existing uniforms (in green) if I'm not sorely mistaken. So the net effect is that we're down some green uniforms, which we have to replace anyway, and our troops didn't enjoy the benefit of having real camouflage but had to build their own (PS - all infanteers generally add their own camouflage anyway.... that isn't an *elite* decision....). So our net financial benefit? Nil. And maybe it would have helped keep some of our troops a bit safer if we'd got them desert camouflage a bit earlier.

            Our troops coped. That's because they are good. Our troops coped up until the point where our overstretched forces couldn't support them and they needed to rotate home to get a rest. Then they didn't cope and we bailed out. It isn't the troops I blame for that.

            The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters,

            Which have proven to be problematic too. When did we acquire modern subs? Refit after refit has failed to get them out and operating? Why? The Australians turned them down as broken, used-up and not cost effective. We tried to make due and my prediction is we'll end up paying more and having less operational time than if we bought some new ones.

            it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners.

            Gee, when Sea Kings and Gryphons fall out of the sky from metal fatigue, when the other countries come to see us for how to keep overlong serving C-130's in the air with bandaids, when the CF-18s start experiencing serious stress issues due to age, and when our old equipment is KILLING OUR SOLDIERS at an alarming rate, but our PM can go buy himself new jets at the drop of a hat.... no, that doesn't merit ANY attention, does it?

            We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US',

            We were a smaller country 50 years ago and we had the third or fourth largest military in the world, especially naval.

            I'm perfectly fine with that.

            Apparently it doesn't disturb you our soldiers are dying because of antiquated equipment. And apparently it doesn't distrub you that at one point we had 5-10K men deployed on NATO/UN missions, and now the number is in the hundreds? Gee, I wonder if the people we were helping but aren't anymore and the trouble spots we are leaving to someone else are just fine with that?

            We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled.

            Yes assassinations of senior government ministers and continuing gun battles and insurgent actions tell me things have really calmed down. How could I not have seen that?

            And speaking of our snipers: Why has our government blocked them getting decorated by the US for doing a good job?

            Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.

            You obviously know a pretty freakin slim amount about military operations. Such casualties may have been avoidable in a perfect world. But military operations always entail risk, even in the safest circumstances. And people are human and screw up. But the screw up there may well have been from the poor training our senior officers have in large excercises (was our last Brigade level excercise in 1987?). They don't get a chance to deal with large unit ops enough to be 100% proficient. Oh, and throw in a NG Air unit pushed to make readiness (again, overstressed, this time on the US side because they are doing stuff other folks used to help out with all by themselves now).

            God save us from people like you who live in their comfortable little country and don't care much about our soldiers or the people we send them out to help.
          • You have the most screwed up logic and agruments on every single point.

            Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.

            No it doesn't!! You think you're going to be able to predict the next war far enough in advance, *and* get political buy in from everybody to quadruple the military budget and somehow magically get 3 more batallions of recruits recruited and trained in time? What are you NUTS? Just where the hell do you get the EXPERIENCE and HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE to second guess every single military historian and experienced military leader the western world has?

            The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry- An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses.... Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.

            The calls are only constant because there is CONSTANTLY something so decrepid that at all times there is at least one thing that needs emergency attention!!! That's NOT a good standard operating procedure! Waiting until a military system becomes a hazard and a deathtrap for 10 years is not the right way to figure out that it's time to upgrade.

            You can't use the stupid politician's intransigence and political hot potato handling of the chopper program to argue that we don't really need flyable choppers on the decks of our ships.

            Rotting in warehouses??? WTF? The buying programs have been cut to the bone, we don't have a single system that isn't unavailable for extended periods of time because we don't have enough of them! That includes our "big new modern navy", which is right on the razors edge of being too small to participate.

            Our individual soldiers are NOT paid quite well, and only have fantastic personal equipment because we finally managed to convince the government to buy them new equipment, the same equipment people like you rallied against as being "un-needed" and "arms-industry sales tactics"!

            it was a self-pursued role,

            NO IT WASN'T! The Americans would LOVE to not have to pay for it all by themselves. If you don't think fighting people like Sadam Hussein, Al-Qaida, North Korea, or a future unstable China (think ahead stupid) is worth anything, come out and say it!

            You don't want to spend money on the Military, but you keep pointing out our "fabulous equipment", which is entirely a result of us HAVING SPENT money on the military despite the prior opposition of people like you. WTF?

            We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US'

            That is the stupidest most useless comment ever. Taken to it's non-logical extereme, we might as well not pay ANY ATTENTION what so ever to JUST HOW SMALL we are, PROPORTIONALLY, compared to ANYBODY! Why? Why should we spend 2 times less per person to keep the world free than the Finnish or Belgians!??

            Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire

            NO IT WASN'T. You're pulling this stuff out of your ASS!!!
      • Canada quickly becomes a military powerhouse.


        Be Afraid... Be Very Afraid... Eh.
      • Canada finished the War with the World's 3rd largest Navy and the fourth largest Air Force.

        Overall, Canada was the fourth-largest military power on the planet at the end of the war. Then, it did the completely unprecedented and unilaterally disarmed.

        Canada also became an enormous factory during WWII and produced a lot of equipment for all allies and may have saved the allies from falling while the Americans continued to sit on their hands. Canada was also home of the largest flight-training program for the allies.

  • Interresting, (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 )
    I go to SFU and i'm taking some chemistry classes there and never heard a word about this. I thought it would make the school newspaper at least. We are on the list though. :S
    • Just in case you are interested and havn't found it yet, SFU's machine is a beowulf cluster and is called bugaboo [hpc.sfu.ca].

      Offtopic, the Peak (the school "newspaper" of SFU for those who don't know) wouldn't publish anything unless it portrayed the injustice of students / homeless / leftwingers etc being beaten down repeatedly by "the man", so I don't know why they would publish this.

  • For One Day? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anenga ( 529854 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:11PM (#4590132)
    Most Powerful Computer in Canada - for a Day
    Oh, give them more credit than that. It takes more than one day for "the fastest computer" to be obsolete. Maybe a month, or two.
  • I'm a great believer in 'use what you have' network building and the power of Metcalfe's law (and all that). Maybe this is even better than going out and haranguing the government for money for a super-expensive super-computer. If this works out, (and, I guess, that might be seen tomorrow) then even little universities (and little research departments in not-sexy areas of study) could get big computing power when they need it but not have to ransom their entire research agenda just to afford the big computer

    Dcobbler
    Cobbling together your digital environment: www.digitalcobbler.com
  • Maybe if we kept it up for a week we'd find those darn extra terrestrials and cure cancer in one fell swoop.
  • Sounds like final exams are coming up pretty quick on them, maybe they shouldn't have procrastinated.

  • UNB Represent! :) (Score:3, Funny)

    by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:21PM (#4590182) Homepage
    ... Actually this means I'll have to wait an extra day to work on my project for my distributed / parallel computing course. So this experiment also gets to help me procrastinate :)

  • CANADA! (Score:5, Funny)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:26PM (#4590208)
    First the alarming lead in Zamboni technology, now this!!

  • Sounds like a bunch of nerds trying to calculate how to get a date instead of going to the bar and trying it the good ole' way ... clue fellas: This is NOT the way!

    {offtopic?}
  • Is Albert Johnson's Amazing Vic-20 World Tour taking a detour through Toronto?

  • IT'S RUNNING NOW!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @05:31PM (#4590239) Journal
    The site appears to be solidly withstanding a thorough and complete slashdotting!! The only rational explanation is that the most powerful computer in Canadia is running their web site right now! As they say in French-Canadian, c'est incredible.
  • Give IBM a few months, and I'm sure they would be more than willing to sell them some CPU time on their on demand supercomputer [slashdot.org].

  • Ah, the memories (Score:5, Funny)

    by morcheeba ( 260908 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @06:13PM (#4590449) Journal
    Hmph. I remember back in January of '98 when I had the most powerful computer in Canada! [cybervox.org] Just me, my laptop, some cold soup from a can, and some candles...
  • Interesting paragraph from the site:

    If CISS-1 is a short-term vision, then we hope that CISS will become a long-term vision. Canada Foundation for Innovation requires that the computing sites share 20% of their resources. One can envision CISS being a monthly event where, for example, 3 days a month are set aside for large-scale national computations. This would be unique in the world, and a tremendous opportunity for Canadian scientists.

    This is pretty cool.. I wonder if they plan on including p2p clients in the future?

  • Wait just a gosh-darn minute here (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ottffssent ( 18387 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @07:28PM (#4590898)
    If it's going to solve in a day what would otherwise take 6 years, it has to be almost 2200 times as powerful as their baseline. With 18 universities cooperating, that's about 120 times the baseline provided by each uni. From the article: "The University [one of the 18] will have 108 computer processors helping work on the problem." So, their baseline is a slow single-processor machine - who thinks that's anywhere near a fair comparison? Wow, we built a cluster! And it's lots faster than a single-processor machine! Never would have guessed!

    So they've got 2000 processors working on this problem. Probably about as much horsepower as 1000 recent CPUs, or 250 U of rackspace. About 7 racks full of 1U systems with 4 Athlons in 'em. A million dollars would easily cover that, and if you stick it in northern Canada, you get cold clean air for free so the ongoing costs would be much less as well.

    What I'm getting at is that I'm not real impressed, either with the article or with the project. If they spent more than 3 weeks organizing this, it would have been faster to just have one uni run the simulation in-house.
  • The site states that Canada has over 20 serious supercomputer installations. It also states that the problem being tackled would normally take 3-6 years. So how do they intend to solve the problem in less than one one-thousandth of the normal time by using only 20 times the computational power? Something here doesn't add up.

  • ...a thought... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Sunday November 03, 2002 @09:51PM (#4591554) Journal
    Someone should write a General Distributed Comuptation client (ala seti@home or TivoCrack) screensaver and make a 'pseudo-cluster' out of all the Computers Lab/Office PeeCees...

    A group of some kind could be created to provide access / approval of proposed usages etc etc and it would create a new massive-computation resource... of some kind... just a thought.

  • Slashdot discussed this two weeks ago. [slashdot.org] I wrote this response [slashdot.org] :-)


    According to Seti@Home, Canada has 213307 machines working on SETI problems, which have contributed 71519 machine-years. The academic project has about 1% this many machines. Some of them may be faster than the average SETI machine. My article also commented about Canada's place on top500.org.

  • The American Version will do it 48% faster and not try to compare itself to the Canadian version.
  • And I thought my residence bandwidth sucked now...
  • The GRID computing project http://www.gridcomputing.com/ is a set of software standards for linking computers into super computing networks. Most of the world's supercomputing centers particpate in one way or the other. However it appears from the webpage of the this Candanian project that they are not using GRID and going their own way.

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