From: Jay Campbell <edge@got.net>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: a997a08f32e141fe3649a46c72f38ef5f330bb54c5454a1cc3206bf862f60637
Message ID: <199510271321.GAA21142@you.got.net>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1995-10-27 13:18:56 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 21:18:56 +0800
From: Jay Campbell <edge@got.net>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 21:18:56 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: idle CPU markets
Message-ID: <199510271321.GAA21142@you.got.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
>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.)
Use the right tool for the right job. Cycle sales are useless for most
applications, and forcing a square peg into a round peg will only result in
frustration. There are a gazillion useful outlets for this technology,
though - more pop up all the time. The latest I heard today was OCR .tiff ->
.txt conversion, where the payee can afford (cpu-wise) to toggle all the
settings to the highest (slowest) quality.
>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.
Voting - send the same data to 3+ unrelated machines (if you can afford
redundancy) and accept the 'majority opinion'.
Sanity checking - depends on the algorithms in question; may require human
intervention in many cases, where errors (accidental or not) may not be
easily machine-recognizable.
... just to name a couple of the top of my head.
>3. Similarly, many such applications are highly confidential.
This is the easy one :) That is to say, solutions to this problem are
already being implemented for other applications.
--
Jay Campbell edge@got.net - Operations Manager
-=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking, Santa Cruz Node
Jay@Campbell.net got.net? PGP MIT KeyID 0xACAE1A89
"On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy
behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."
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1995-10-27 (Fri, 27 Oct 1995 21:18:56 +0800) - Re: idle CPU markets - Jay Campbell <edge@got.net>