From: Bryce <wilcoxb@nagina.cs.colorado.edu>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 11:57:17 +0800
To: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: idle CPU markets
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951026184046.23045A-100000@eskimo.com>
Message-ID: <199510270342.VAA13430@nagina.cs.colorado.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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 An entity calling itself "Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>" allegedly wrote:
>
> What other problems would benefit from easy access to lots of distributed 
> CPU cycles?


Well there are plenty of applications that want lots of cycles, but
there are several problems with the idle CPU market approach to getting
those cycles.



(Examples I can think of:  rendering of movie-quality graphics in
non-real-time, scientific computation/modelling, compiling...)


1.  Many such applications want their computation to be highly 
responsive--  the long turn-around involved in farming your task 
over a WAN is often prohibitive.  (E.g. real-time graphics.)

2.  Also many applications that need this kind of power are highly 
sensitive to inaccuracy or fraud.  A scientific modelling experiment 
which uses zillions of cycles can be rendered completely worthless 
if a tiny calculation that had been farmed to Joe Blow is done wrong 
or is lied about by Joe.

3.  Similarly, many such applications are highly confidential.


I'm sure some cypherpunks have good ideas on how to deal with
problems 3 and maybe 2...



Bryce

signatures follow


            "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield."   
    <a href="http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~wilcoxb/Niche.html">

                          bryce@colorado.edu                   </a>



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