I've been reading some of the many posts on concurrency and multi-core processors. As always, a very interesting discussion.
It got me thinking it would be cool if there was a generic Squeak compute farm which you could utilize from any Squeak image. Just write some code in a map/reduce fashion and send some jobs to the farm.
Perhaps running in spare cycles on the desktop and or dedicated servers. Although I'm not sure how the latter could be funded.
We'd need to work out how to manage the code, job scheduling, security, etc. I doubt it would be easy but it may be very rewarding. Perhaps someone has looked at something like this already?
It feels like there's an interesting idea in there somewhere. A language extension that gives everyone access to a super computer.
I understand that if everyone is using the same super computer, it ceases to be super but i doubt this would be the case.
Let me know what you think.
Zulq.
On 22/10/2007, Zulq Alam me@zulq.net wrote:
I've been reading some of the many posts on concurrency and multi-core processors. As always, a very interesting discussion.
It got me thinking it would be cool if there was a generic Squeak compute farm which you could utilize from any Squeak image. Just write some code in a map/reduce fashion and send some jobs to the farm.
Perhaps running in spare cycles on the desktop and or dedicated servers. Although I'm not sure how the latter could be funded.
We'd need to work out how to manage the code, job scheduling, security, etc. I doubt it would be easy but it may be very rewarding. Perhaps someone has looked at something like this already?
It feels like there's an interesting idea in there somewhere. A language extension that gives everyone access to a super computer.
I understand that if everyone is using the same super computer, it ceases to be super but i doubt this would be the case.
Let me know what you think.
I think things which you proposing are just a distributed computing challenge. If we could have a good distributed computing farm, there will be no need in having a super-computer. A thousands(millions) of desktop PCs can easily overcome a computing power of any super-computer known in the world.
In my turn, i propose other idea: how about that each of us installing a package for distributed computing and sharing own PC's computing power. Then the BIG corporations will come and rent our computing power :)
Zulq.
Igor Stasenko wrote:
I think things which you proposing are just a distributed computing challenge.
Yes, but that doesn't make it easy to provide a safe, reliable and effective compute farm that can be used from any Squeak image.
If we could have a good distributed computing farm, there will be no need in having a super-computer. A thousands(millions) of desktop PCs can easily overcome a computing power of any super-computer known in the world.
This is what I mean when I write about a super computer. I don't mean a single phsycial machine.
I think it would be hard to find a hundred machines, let alone thousands or millions.
A backbone of a few servers might be a good way to get the ball rolling.
In my turn, i propose other idea: how about that each of us installing a package for distributed computing and sharing own PC's computing power.
This would and should be an option for adding compute power to the farm. Although it should not be limited to this, i.e. dedicated servers etc.
In my turn, i propose other idea: how about that each of us installing a package for distributed computing and sharing own PC's computing power. Then the BIG corporations will come and rent our computing power :)
-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
LOL :-D somhow this has to be a niche in market because it happens in other industries. I saw once a video about, I think in Holland, common people get toghether and become business partners and found the buy of an eolic power plant then sell energy getting amortization and then collectiong dividends (according to it's participation) to the big energy distributor of that province making the wind work for them. Clean and clever. That business scales to a farm of eolic power plants. Your proposal scales to a farm (those PC's) of computing squeaks that could produce dividends according to computing power provided/used. Is not that crazy you know?
Cheers,
Sebastian
Hi Zulq--
This is something I'd like to do with Spoon.
-C
-- Craig Latta improvisational musical informaticist www.netjam.org Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
Hi Craig,
I did think of Spoon. But am not really familiar with it.
Let's say I have two spoon images, A and B. If I create new classes and and methods in A can I then instatiate and run them in B?
Could B regulate what can and cannot be done, e.g. restrict access to the file system, os processes, certain objects and methods?
Once A is done, could B identify and purge all the objects created?
Would this be possible if image B was a Spoon image but image A was not?
Regards, Zulq.
Craig Latta wrote:
This is something I'd like to do with Spoon.
This is something that would be possible with the concurrency solution I was thinking about. The Erlang methodology for Nodes joining a group is pretty simplistic, I would would want something more secure with perhaps more levels of access (e.g. this access level is only permitted to send these specific messages) with the "handshake" based on public/private key cryptography.
The rest would have to be built on top of this infrastructure, but I think this would be a good foundation to start from.
On 10/22/07, Zulq Alam me@zulq.net wrote:
I've been reading some of the many posts on concurrency and multi-core processors. As always, a very interesting discussion.
It got me thinking it would be cool if there was a generic Squeak compute farm which you could utilize from any Squeak image. Just write some code in a map/reduce fashion and send some jobs to the farm.
Perhaps running in spare cycles on the desktop and or dedicated servers. Although I'm not sure how the latter could be funded.
We'd need to work out how to manage the code, job scheduling, security, etc. I doubt it would be easy but it may be very rewarding. Perhaps someone has looked at something like this already?
It feels like there's an interesting idea in there somewhere. A language extension that gives everyone access to a super computer.
I understand that if everyone is using the same super computer, it ceases to be super but i doubt this would be the case.
Let me know what you think.
Zulq.
Hi Jason,
For a compute farm you maybe you'd only need one level of access? I suppose it's not as much of a general concurrency solution.
Regards, Zulq.
Jason Johnson wrote:
This is something that would be possible with the concurrency solution I was thinking about. The Erlang methodology for Nodes joining a group is pretty simplistic, I would would want something more secure with perhaps more levels of access (e.g. this access level is only permitted to send these specific messages) with the "handshake" based on public/private key cryptography.
The rest would have to be built on top of this infrastructure, but I think this would be a good foundation to start from.
On 10/22/07, Zulq Alam me@zulq.net wrote:
I've been reading some of the many posts on concurrency and multi-core processors. As always, a very interesting discussion.
It got me thinking it would be cool if there was a generic Squeak compute farm which you could utilize from any Squeak image. Just write some code in a map/reduce fashion and send some jobs to the farm.
Perhaps running in spare cycles on the desktop and or dedicated servers. Although I'm not sure how the latter could be funded.
We'd need to work out how to manage the code, job scheduling, security, etc. I doubt it would be easy but it may be very rewarding. Perhaps someone has looked at something like this already?
It feels like there's an interesting idea in there somewhere. A language extension that gives everyone access to a super computer.
I understand that if everyone is using the same super computer, it ceases to be super but i doubt this would be the case.
Let me know what you think.
Zulq.
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Craig Latta -
Igor Stasenko -
Jason Johnson -
Sebastian Sastre -
Zulq Alam