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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Support
Forum: Suggestions / Feedback
Thread: Expanding the Scope of The Project... |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 17
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I've been a big fan of distributed computing for some time - as I've yet to see any evidence of actual, newsworthy good to come from it, I do rather like the ideal and would like to see more people get in on it.
I'd like to see the scope of the project expand, and I believe I know the perfect way for it to do so: game consoles. In particular, the Playstation 3, which will leverage one or more of IBM/Sony/Toshiba's immensely powerful CELL processors. The PS3 will have an Internet connection and an OS, so I think this is a pretty ideal platform for it. Naturally this wouldn't run while the user was playing PS3 games, but instead only when using the system OS, watching movies, playing music or any other non-system-intensive functions, of which the PS3 will have many. Like the PSP, the PS3 will likely allow users to quit out of games at any time and, I believe, make it more likely that people will actually do this. If users are aware of the benefit of their clock cycles and asked by the OS to leave the system on when not playing games, you'll have a huge and completely untapped processing resource at your fingertips, as well as millions of potential new users. I'm sure there are logistical hurdles involved, but I think this is something that should be seriously pursued, given the potential benefit and potential to mainstream the concept of distributed computing. -Peter |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
i agree 110% with u!!! this is a good idea which i hope gets alot of momentum from both people at IBM and on this site
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
While I find this idea very interesting and a good idea, I don't think it will fly for the main reason that modifying the game console OS or installing 3rd party applications on it is a typically a violation of your licensing agreement. You can almost guarantee a legal battle would follow, and its a mess just better avoided...but it is good in concept.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Just a friendly jab =)
PS3 wont have anything on Xbox2 =P Don't know why people try to stay loyal to Sony (who just got tore up from the floor up with Blizzard slapping around Sony’s Everquest with World of Warcraft.) I invest in my computer, but after playing both with people I have found my experience with Xbox better. Less problems to. I do not own either so I think that is fairly objective and probably anecdotal as well heh =P Although your idea would be great for both. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
A super idea that I hope goes further than just this message board
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
...Replying a little late to this.
I have no system loyalties, at least when it comes to stuff like the WCG - I only mentioned the PS3 because IBM is involved with it and is running the WCG, so it seemed like a natual way to kick this off. The Xbox 360 and Revolution would be great fits as well, of course, although I don't see MS letting WCG on their platform and would rather, say, create their own MSN-branded Distributed Computing client. And this would not involve "installing 3rd party software," but getting this feature built into the OS itself. All of the new consoles will have downloadable OS updates, and if WCG couldn't be included at launch, it could certainly be added in the future. Took a while for people to reply to this, and I'm glad to see that people like the idea. I was motivated to come look at it because Wired ran a story about the potential of a move like this today, and felt it would be an interesting time to see the responses. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67835,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5 Check the article out, and I think I'm gonna turn Penny Arcade and maybe some press folks onto this which I should've done before. -Peter |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I'm thinking eventually there will be a distributed computing project that is interactive. The user is somehow going to be able to interface with the client although I think it might be a diversionary interaction not related to the primary goal of the project. The user plays a game while the client is running but the game is just there to keep the user interested and only uses a smaller fraction of the processor while the majority of the processor is used for the primary project. I think this kind of interactive dc project will have a tendency to draw a larger audience than todays non-interactive dc projects. So the user will get the idea (s)he is contributing to a cause at the same time as playing the game. And if the games get good enough, you could really get some big numbers participating and if that becomes the case, the developers could contribute more processor cycles to the game and less to the project. It's very likely that the games on the shelf right now could be ported into such an environment. So we could see MMOG's DC's like Lineage II which has millions of participants worldwide while in the background proteins are being folded, gravity waves are being scanned for, climate scenarios are being predicted, new drugs are being discovered,...
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The PS3 and it`s platform is very much under sony`s control. IBM just helped design and produce the chips. If Sony intends to comfort development teams for PS3 the way they did for PS2, it`s going to be hell to program for it, with specs that don`t match the hardware, with tricks you can only find out by accident, and a very tight security subscriber link to Sony Online Entertainment. I`m not saying uit can`t be done, but probably not with Sony`s approval. They are pretty paranoid when it comes to shielding their development area from mainstream PC hacking.
I should know because I work in a dev team on PS2. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Here is a post that might interest some:
PS3 with Linux Ken Kutaragi has been quoted as saying that linux will be available for PS3. You can get a kit for PS2. This certainly opens things up for unused entertainment supercomputers. I suspect when WCG release a linux version it will be binary so unless they recompile for this hardware or release source code this is a bit of a mute point. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
This is something that is on our list of possible enhancements. As stated before, we are a small development team, but we are analyzing the effort it would take to have our WCG agent run on various console machines.
Thanks for the support. |
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