Borrowing Computing Power

[Derek Broughton]

Bruce Marshall wrote:

> On Wednesday 20 June 2007, Derek Broughton wrote:
>> > Thank you, but, that was for compiling jobs only. Can it be done for
>> > any job? As if the desktop would now become an extended system, with
>> > the resources of the laptop added to it. Like, when I mount the laptop
>> > (did it one time on SuSE with fuse and sshfs) on a particular mount
>> > point, the HD space gets added up, can it be done for the resources
>> > too?
>>
>> The short answer is "yes".  The much longer answer is "not really" :-)
>>
>> BOINC shares many home computers for scientific projects, but it requires
>> the application to be written specifically to use BOINC.
>>
>> Google for "Linux grid computing".  There's a lot of work being done, but
>> I don't know that any of it is useful in the way you want, yet.
> 
> I would disagree with the above and reverse it:   the short answer is NO.

Well, I have to agree that "no" is shorter than "yes" :-)
> 
> BOINC parcels out pieces of 'work'  and no two  computers are working on
> the same piece of the puzzle.

True, but it's still shared use of the resources of multiple computers - OP
didn't put any limitations on the problem.

> The problem is that any process which is going to use more than one
> computer (as opposed to  more than one cpu)  would have to be written
> specifically to parcel out chunks of the work.  This is not a normal thing
> in my opinion and for a normal user wouldn't provide any benefit.

Sure, but it's _still_ theoretically possible - it's just not practical for
the home user.  I imagine it will become so, eventually.  I still don't
know if it will ever become desirable for the average home user.

> Large scientific 
> projects like Setiathome and some medical projects which need lots of
> computer power can justify the time and effort involved.
-- 
derek