Successful example of grid calculation - All World PC
Monday, June 30 2003 3:11 PM 2000, IBM released the fastest supercomputer in the United States. This computer called "ASCI White" executes 12.3 trillion computation per second, which is composed of 512 independent RS6000 servers designed, with a total of 8192 processors that run IBM Development Dedicated UNIX System --aix . ASCI White is used to protect the security of US nuclear weapons and priced at $ 110 million. However, the previous SETI @ Home plan to search for the exterior civilization has led to thousands of PCs in the network, gain more powerful processing capabilities than the current supercomputer and the speed than ASCI WHITE.
On May 17, 1999, a scientific project of the foundation of the University of California Berkeley was launched. Seti @ Home is the abbreviation of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence At Home, It means: Looking for alien civilization at home. The SETI @ Home project is mainly to analyze the data of the world's largest radio telescope to help scientists explore alien organisms, and their calculation mode is calculated.
Since the formal launch of the SETI @ Home project, there have been 3 million volunteers to participate in this project. They use the pieces of information collected from the specified site, and use their computer to operate analysis, find the signs of life in the universe. The processing amount of 15T has reached 15T, and the average of each participant makes his computer for 17 and a half hours, which is equivalent to using a PC working 48 2023, which is equivalent to working in 48 years using supercomputers. This project fully utilizes the power of the computer distributed around the world, although the entire plan costs only $ 500,000, but has a powerful power.
The approximate process of the seti @ Home project is this:
1. Government or research departments submit a task that requires a huge amount of operations to the server in the form of procedures and data.
2. The server divides the data and program code into smaller parts, also known as "sub-task".
3. Install a special customer program with the PC, which can automatically contact the server, automatically download and process subtutaneous tasks.
4. The result is sent back to the server after the sub task is processed. Then, the client program downloads a new submission to continue processing.
5. Once all sub tasks are processed, the server summarizes the various results, generates the final report, and send the final result back to the author.
Seti @ Home's information is derived from the information collected by the Radio telescope of Puendo Rico, this observation begins with approximately 35g of information every day, because there is not enough online bandwidth, so it can only be recorded Tape, served in Berklai in a traditional mailing manner, and the data is divided into approximately 350K per unit, transmitting the participant to the participant through the Internet, with a dispersion operation to handle huge data. Since the SETI @ Home project did not get a special funding fee of the country, I have to ask the PC to help around the world. People who participated in this event did not have any rewards, only silently dedication, but in accordance with the number of data pieces from feedback, from the project launched, "return" in the top ten of the "return" is: beauty, English, Canada, Germany, Japanese Sweden, Australia, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, in Asia Japan and my country has entered the top 20.
Although the alien has not been found so far, the SETI @ Home project has proved that grid calculation is effective.
