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Distributed Computing on Next Gen Consoles

Posted by Zonk on Sun Jun 19, 2005 06:56 AM
from the working-for-the-man dept.
Editorial Math Entertainment Games
anonymous lion writes "Wired has a story on the need for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to support distributed computing with a non-gaming purpose. The article goes on to discuss SETI@home, distributed.net, and Folding@Home." From the article: "The next generation of console gaming is going to see a huge increase in machine performance and overall computing power. Already planned for both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are multiple 3.2-GHz PowerPC processors capable of handling advanced gaming and graphics simulations, along with out-of-the-box internet capabilities such as Xbox Live Silver. With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use."
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  • "Unused resources"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imsabbel (611519) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:00AM (#12855635)
    How about switching the thing off?
    Its not that a game console is something like a desktop pc, running the whole day just to be quickly accessable....

    • Re:"Unused resources"? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Curtman (556920) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:04AM (#12855648)
      Its not that a game console is something like a desktop pc

      They aren't? [hardwarezone.com]
      • That not the point, i know the internals of every console out there as good as anybody.

        I wasnt talking about the hardware, but about the usage pattern (no long boot times, usually longer play sessions, no multitasking) that makes a difference between game console and desktop pc.
        • (no long boot times, usually longer play sessions, no multitasking) that makes a difference between game console and desktop pc.

          I've never been a big fan of game consoles for that reason. I modchipped a few X-Box's for friends and played with XBMC a bit, but it was very much a toy in my eyes too. It also seemed like Microsoft was fighting our attempts to turn it into a PC at every turn. This next generation is going to be different from the looks of things though. I found this quote particularly int
          • I believe that if people would turn the game off and save the money from wear and tear and electricity and donate that to the cause it would be better especially now that IBM has the big blue gene computer up and running.
    • So, there are actually two resources that are available - the first is the computing power, the second would be the heat energy.

      I've always thought it was an incredible shame that there are all these electric base board heaters out there that just do that - heat. It seems to my (possibly demented) mind, that it would make more sense to have those heaters consist of processors doing some type of useful calculation.

      So, in houses heated by electricity, maybe it would make sense to leave the PS3/XBox-360s on
        • There are many houses that do not have access to natural gas, and so heat with electricity.

          What planet do you live on?
            • Heat pumps are a form of electric heat. Though they do not make heat from resistence, they do use electricity to produce warm air. Plus heat pump systems have an electric fallover if the temperature drops too low in the winter. I believe a heat pump system was what the GP was referring to when he made his comment defending electric heat.
                • Even here in Sweden only a fraction of our energy comes from renewable sources.

                  Well, technically you are correct, but that's only because 1/2 is a fraction. Actually, we're at 55% [naturvardsverket.se] at the moment.

                  And while I'm personally a supporter of nuclear power I would even think of putting it in the same group of energy producers as wind, solar or water.

                  That depends on the context. If we're talking about renewables, then fission-based nuclear plants are out. If we're talking about cheap, then solar and wind ar

    • Well, it may not be much of an issue now, but this is quickly changing.

      Both Microsoft and Sony are playing with the idea that these game consoles will do more than merely play games. If it also has DVR functionality, advanced DVD capabilities, etc., then the day will soon arrive where people DO leave them on 24x7.

      I have a TiVo, which is just a special-purpose computer. I wouldn't mind at all if it had a "power down" mode that would run a grid application such as trying to help cure cancer while it's n

      • I certainly question the wisdom of leaving a device like the Xbox on in the belief that doing so is going to extend it's life. But even if you do believe that (and I'll grant there is some truth to the idea that thermal shock of cycling on and off does in electronics, I just think it's outweighed by other factors in this case), it is still bogus to say With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use. R
      • ### The reason you shouldn't switch off your computer is to keep the electronics at a relatively constant temperature.

        I seriously doubt that this is an issue. I have yet to actually see a single computer that breaks for this reason. Fans, harddisk and the like all break years before your electronics go by by. And a fan constantly rotating 24/7 for sure gets more used then one that only rotates for 40h a week.

        ### It doesn't have anything to do with constant access

        Its *all* about constant access. If comput

      • Re:"Unused resources"? (Score:5, Informative)

        by segmond (34052) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:52AM (#12855775)
        really? and what components does your computer have outside of disk drives doesn't your television have? people turn on/off their TV tons of times a day, it's the same electronics component. Please!
        Shed the myth! Hard disks for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems boot very fast, there is no need to keep your computer on if you will not be using it for a long time.
        • ystems boot very fast,

          You haven't booted XP in a while, have you? Every service pack seems to make the boot up process longer and longer. Even my somewhat pristine company provided laptop takes much longer than I would like.

        • Shed the myth! Hard disks for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems boot very fast, there is no need to keep your computer on if you will not be using it for a long time.

          Shed the myth! Power saving modes for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems use very little power in standby, there is no need to turn your computer off if you will not be using it for a long time.

          Sorry, couldn't resist... anyway, I agree with most of your statement, I just

  • Most people won't do it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aussie_a (778472) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:00AM (#12855637) Journal
    And most people won't offer to have their console used for Seti or folding or whatever. Something that's needed more then horsepower, is the willingness to bother with it. And that will stop too many of these things from being overly popular.
  • It's great to help cure cancer, but not if it causes the number of polygons on Lara Croft's breasts to drop.

    Also, will users have a choice concerning whether to so use their consoles' spare cycles, or will it happen without their concent or even overt knowledge? Will they be able to decide which project gets the use of their machine's time? And what if someone comes up with an entertainment use for those cycles...?

    • Re:Unspoken subtext: 'cause they're overpowered (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Gherald (682277) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:09AM (#12855665) Journal
      > It's great to help cure cancer, but not if it causes the number of polygons on Lara Croft's breasts to drop.

      It's the ass, you n00b!

      But this is irrelevant. The most sensible choice and the one Wired is advocating is a distributed client that runs when the system is not being used for gaming.

      > will users have a choice concerning whether to so use their consoles' spare cycles, or will it happen without their concent or even overt knowledge?

      Obviously the more control the user has, the better. But anything would be better than nothing.

      > Will they be able to decide which project gets the use of their machine's time?

      See above.

      > And what if someone comes up with an entertainment use for those cycles...?

      No doubt it will result in a story being submitted to Slashdot.
    • It's great to help cure cancer, but not if it causes the number of polygons on Lara Croft's breasts to drop.
      Polygons? Ick! Wake me when they've got realtime rendering of CURVES.

  • waste power (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:03AM (#12855644)
    Sure,
    the average consumer LOVES to waste power and bandwidth to search for aliens. Folding, Seti & others are good projects, but if Wired thinks the average console owner wants his console to suck power, bandwidth, and make huge fan noise while not doing something with it,they may be seriously mistaken.

    I'm sure the same people that run Linux on their XBOX will run folding on their console, but not the majority of users, even if the console ships with that functionality.
    • agreed. It might help cure cancer, but at the same time the gigawatts of power that is being wasted is doing god knows what to the environment (until we have clean renewable energy anyway).
        • But if it's sunny enough to make solar energy useful, then you'l likely not want the additional heat generated by a bunch of computers.. More likely all the energy from the solar panels will be pumped into your aircon!

  • I don't play well with the other kids (Score:3, Funny)

    by nso (825449) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:04AM (#12855647)
    I'm fed up with the idea that sharing is caring. I don't like to share. I don't want anyone using my bandwidth, my CPU-cycles, my harddrive or my bathroom. It's not that I don't have a high bandwidth connection or several idle CPU's laying around, it's just that I don't like the idea of giving when all I want is recieving (i.e. torrent) I say we put an end to this hippiecomu P2P and other distributed services once and for all.

  • Theres a need? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:07AM (#12855656)
    I think someone has confused something they would like with an actual requirement. I can just see all the parents lining up to subscribe to this 'need' because they really want to use their jumped up electricity bills to help search for extratrestrial life signs

      • Re:Theres a need? (Score:4, Informative)

        by imsabbel (611519) on Sunday June 19 2005, @09:24AM (#12856087)
        A hint for you:
        A 650W PSU doesnt draw 650W if its only under 100W load.
        So my 350W enermaxx is perfectly happy drawing 50W when the pc is idle. Its efficiency may be lower, but thats not THAT huge of a difference.
        AND PLEASE, learn your units. Saying "drawns more voltage then needed" really makes you look stupid.

        If you put a hd, a 50W cpu, 512MB high speed ram and a GPU in a console, it doesnt magically NOT use that much less energy than in a PC.
        And using DC on a console defeats to total purpose: using idle cycles, mostly on little used computers.
        If you turn the computer on to run the DC client, you are doing something wrong (and if you BUY stuff to run DC clients, please die)

  • It's the money, stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mrshowtime (562809) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:20AM (#12855685)
    All of the new console makers are going to be losing mega cash for each console sold, so why would they make any incentive for anyone to buy their consoles and use them as computers? The manufacturers lose money on the console and lose any possible revenue from game sales.

    If the console manufacturers provide software that somehow taps the raw horsepower of the new consoles what would stop organizations, legal or not, from buying large quantities of game systems just to make a supercomputer for very cheap? Fuck that.

    If I had not preordered my PS2 a year in advance I would have had to wait NINE months to be able to get one in the states. The demand for the new systems is going to be even greater. The last thing consumers need to hear is that there is a shortage of their favorite game system because Nerd University bought 10,000 systems for their new supercomputer project.

    Shared computing is all fine and good for PC/Mac users, but honestly, for a manufacturer to open the floodgates of their OS to satisfy the wants of .01% of the uber-nerd population is insanity.
    • Um ... right ... because only nerds are interested in curing diseases?
      • Part of the price of the console is the R&D cost, if Nerd University is going to subsidize part of it with their projects by buying 10,000 of them, and thus making the price slash for the rest of us occur earlier, why not?

        I believe you aren't seeing the point. Usually, when a console is first released they are sold at an actual _loss_, so NU buying 10,000 will do nothing to speed up a price cut. In fact, since the game companies plan to recoup their losses on consoles with accessory and game sales

  • Not feasible (Score:5, Informative)

    by eheien (94444) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:22AM (#12855692)
    At least with current platforms architectures. The author seems to do plenty of research on current distributed computing projects, but does none on how the consoles perform.

    I know that SETI@home has been ported and tested at least on the XBox, and it performs miserably. These console gaming systems are designed to play games, not do radio signal analysis or other scientific calculation. For example, there's little need for fast memory writing when you're mostly reading textures from RAM, but there's an extreme need when you do millions of in-place Fourier transforms. Unless Microsoft and Sony change their architectures for some inexplicable reason, I can't imagine future architectures would perform much better.

    This article smacks of ignorance on the part of the author, who clearly did no research into the actual performance of consoles in regard to standard scientific computing.
    • Well, of course the XBox is just a poor-performance PC clone at its heart. But the PS3 could quite possibly run circles around standard desktops. And even if it's not extraordinarily fast ... the offset is that there will be MILLIONS of them.
        • The Cell processor in the PS3 happens to be way faster than a $1000 desktop - at specific jobs. A wide range of general software is not what it's good at, but luckily, number-crunching is.

          I don't know precisely what sort of algorithm SETI@Home uses, but the 7 SPE vector units in the Cell chip would be near-ideal for many types of signal processing (far far more so than the original Xbox), so I think it likely it'd work very well indeed.

          If the owner could be bothered leaving it on all day - and if Sony

        • The performance of the Cell's in order core has been described as delivering about a third of the performance of a PowerPC 970 at the same clock rate. That still leaves respectable power for word processing, rendering HTML, etc. The only times most people hit 100% load on a workstation is when they are doing stuff the Cell excels at. For many, a computer with an interface that runs somewhat slower than their current machine, but renders hugely complex 3D video in realtime would be a must have.

          The problem t

    • > At least with current platforms architectures.
      >The author seems to do plenty of research on
      >current distributed computing projects, but does
      >none on how the consoles perform.

      Apparently from what you posted you don't know jack shit about those new consoles architectures...

      >For example, there's little need for fast memory
      > writing when you're mostly reading textures from
      >RAM, but there's an extreme need when you do
      >millions of in-place Fourier transforms.

      PS3 has XDR-DRAM which is

    • The Cell processor (PS3) is made for those applications. At the Power.org convention in Barcelona [power.org], IBM presented a programming example of large FFTs on Cell. It turned out [beyond3d.com], that large FFT calculations are about 100 times faster than on a Xeon 3.2 GHz processor.
      Keep in mind, that this presentation was held in front of super computer professionals and its not that easy to trick them.
  • Since distributed computing projects crank your CPU to 100%, there's definitely an associated energy and environmental cost to running that stuff. This will become increasingly true in the future, with the increasing prevelence of technologies like Intel's "SpeedStep" or AMD's "Cool And Quiet" that allow CPU clockspeeds to dynamically vary the clockspeed and power consumption of a processor. That will only increase the difference in power consumption between a CPU at rest and a CPU that's pegged at 100% crunching SETI units.

    Distributed computing advocates always seem to neglect this. They think that all those unused CPU cycles are a vast, untapped resource just waiting to accomplish fabulous things. Well, as a guy who used to have a few boxes crunching RC5-64 for Distributed.net, I can tell you that it's not a free resource when you're the one paying the electric bill.

    Joe Consumer isn't necessarily going to think this technology is a great idea when he realizes that he's paying an extra $10 a month on his electricity bill for the "privilege" of crunching numbers for some dubious cause.

    And, let's face it. Not all distributed projects are dubious, but many are. The fundamental problem is that a lot of compute-intensive projects simply aren't embarassingly parallel like SETI or RC5-64. And a lot of other parallelizable applications require access to huge datasets that make them unsuitable for distributed work. For example, 3D rendering can be parallelized pretty well... but the datasets are huge. For your CPU to render a single frame of Pixar's latest movie, it would need access to anywhere from hundreds of MB to several GB of texture and geometry data. A lot of scientific applications are similarly constrained.
  • I can see helping SETI, testing an encryption algorithm, or some other such entity but I damn sure am not going to help find a cure for cancer so that the pharmacutical companies can make even more money and deny yet another life saving resource from the people that can least afford it. If the mega-corporations want the world to donate their spare computing resources to them then they should start doing some things for the people. It is amazing that we allow it but we do. Taxpayers spend hundreds of mill

    • Re:To help who? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dr. Weird (566938) on Sunday June 19 2005, @08:02AM (#12855795)
      Two points:

      (1) All of the distributed applications that you mention release the results of their research as public scientific publications. Any companies can use the results, but so can anyone else. Subscription to the journals is all that costs money, but generally free "e-prints" are available. All of the distributed applications that you mention are non-profit.

      (2) Even if they were patenting the results (which they aren't -- see 1) it is better to have the patented result that one has to pay for than to have nothing. If I have breast cancer, I would rather pay $1000 for a test than be unable to get a test because no company wanted to invest in it.

      As a side rant (somewhat related to (2)), you say patents are inhibiting progress. But without the financial incentive that the breast cancer patent generated, the medicine would never have been developed. I'm sorry that so many people only work out of greed, but that's reality at the moment. And it actually works pretty well.

      • Point 1:
        Ok, I stand corrected here. I have seen distributed computing come up where things were not going to be released back to the public though. Most universities, including the afore mentioned Stanford, are doing research with corporations who get to monopolize the results when something useful comes out of them (and taxpayers subsidize university research departments). Although this article doesn't indicate that one way or the other. It does give a link to the project but I don't really want my or

  • Want to get paranoid? You do? Cool!

    Figure: There are plenty of distributed computing projects out there, and it may not be easy to tell from your console's behavior what project you're actually contributing to. Now consider who makes those consoles:

    • Microsoft, whose vested interest is increasing its market share and busting anyone sharing illegal content (software), and
    • Sony, whose vested interest is increasing its market share and busting anyone sharing illegal content (music and video).

    Now imagine y

  • Altruism is not the best motivator (Score:3, Interesting)

    by putko (753330) on Sunday June 19 2005, @07:50AM (#12855768) Homepage Journal
    If Martz wants to use the video game consoles and electricity of people to do his calculations, let him give the people something they want in return, like free games.

    That would probably be enough to motivate a lot more people to turn their machines over to SETI.

    The idea that people are going to let their machine run their crunching away, for free, for no benefit, is pretty stupid. The first distributed computing project to offer any sort of tschocke is likely to become more help.
  • With people having access to several cores for handling computation, there are still some who would think we need a Physics Card [ageia.com]. Wouldn't you hate it to know that you have 4 cores on a system, and yet your system is only using one because someone thought we needed proprietary cards for everything.

  • The future of business computing? (Score:3, Informative)

    by panurge (573432) on Sunday June 19 2005, @08:06AM (#12855806)
    If, as someone points out elsewhere, these consoles are optimised to handle rendering of backgrounds rather than general purpose computing, wouldn't it be more interesting to see if, with a suitable architecture, they couldn't be used in thin(ish) client applications? Perhaps an Xbox is just the thing to render Looking Glass (the proposed Sun 3d desktop) when (if) it is eventually commercialised.

    Perhaps IBM doesn't just want to sell chips to these people. Perhaps it has a reason for selling the PC division to Lenovo. Perhaps it sees an opportunity to create a business architecture in which the virtual business world runs on the server farm, while the graphics and sound capability of the very cheap clients delivers a superior user experience that makes users happy not to have a "PC" on their desk. Meanwhile the data mining and compute-intensive activities are farmed out to those clients while they aren't being used. Fault tolerant. Cheap to extend. And round objects to Microsoft.

  • Not an easy article for me to read. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Burz (138833) on Sunday June 19 2005, @08:51AM (#12855949) Journal
    1. I bought my first Mac in February. Now it seems PPCs are not in the Mac future.

    2. I run ClimatePrediction.net on my Mac and Linux x86 systems. The program is huge, comes from a mainframe environment, and is married to an INTEL compiler. The PPC version is, needless to say, not very fast. Single work units can take months to complete.

    The other projects in the article would be on my plate, too, if they compared with my concern for climate change.

  • Folding Flaws (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mulletproof (513805) on Sunday June 19 2005, @10:14AM (#12856238) Homepage Journal
    "With all that horsepower in a machine that is used for only a fraction of a day, we should offer gamers a chance to put these unused resources to good use."

    Now the Captain is wondering how many of us actually leave our consoles on when not in use? Show of hands... Now! Hmmm, not too many. Now how many of you would actually like to pay extra in electric bills to do it? Ouch. Even less. And finally, how many are going to mod their PS3 and actually downloard the app to make it happen? That leaves just about... Nobody.

      • Re:Folding Flaws (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Mulletproof (513805) on Sunday June 19 2005, @02:01PM (#12857276) Homepage Journal
        You bring up a good point and you're right. Quite a few people never turn off their PCs, probably because they don't want to have to wait for it to boot again. In fact, that trend alone has allowed something like folding@home to succeed-- If you're not going to turn it off, might as well put it to use.

        But consoles are different, probably because just leaving them on doesn't really accomplish anything useful for 90% of the people. They boot nearly instantaneously and will have to load the media from scratch anyway, regardless of whether you leave it on or off. It's like there's no point to do so. Unless I missed a clue somewhere, i can't EVER remember walking into ANYBODIES room to find the console just left on, unless it was purely by accident. It's just not the trend and stuff like Seti and folding can't easily piggyback off something that isn't already an ingrained habit. Not a lot of people are going to change just so they can use their system.

  • Give bonus levels, stronger guns as rewards (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kanweg (771128) on Sunday June 19 2005, @12:53PM (#12856962)
    Apart from the fact that during gaming itself the Distributed Computing program should be (and probably will, as they do now) in the background doing nothing, and that they shouldn't run 100% but rather a bit lower when the console is idle, I could definitely see this happen if the game manufacturers give bonus levels, more bullets, stronger armour or whatever is good, nice and fun in a game. For the game manufacturers it will generate a ton of free publicity when their game helps curing cancer. The gamers get more fun. And if you don't want that, you turn it off. Now how hard is this?

    Bert
    Bonus sllogan: Save a live and you get an additional live.
    • This distributed app (google it) allows a certain group of materials physicists to simulate surface growth at an atomistic level (from quantum mechanics).

      It allows them to make detailed predictions about the dynamics of materials, truly a vital task. If we could predict materials properties (hardness, tensile strength, conductivity, surface roughnes, etc.) by playing with composition on a computer -- much cheaper than by experiments, and much more controllable -- then we would have an entirely new realm

    • Not to burst your bubble... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BackInIraq (862952) on Sunday June 19 2005, @08:01AM (#12855790)
      What if some company would find a smart way to pay the users for the use of their CPU cycles?

      Anything like what you described (or any compensation for your CPU cycles) is unlikely to ever happen. Reason? Most of the organizations asking for your CPU cycles are either too poor or too cheap to give you anything in return. They can't even afford to pay for the power usage that you incur, let alone put anything towards your hardware.

      And for what it would cost to create and maintain a MMOG like what you're talking about, at least one people would be interested in playing, they could just buy an assload of computers (think $100 to $200 a pop barebones systems) and plug them in.

      Not that it isn't a cool idea, just not feasible. You have to see the organizations asking you to run this software for what they really are...beggers. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, as long as you realize they will probably never have anything to offer you (other than the warm and fuzzy feeling of geekiness).
    • I can see them putting this into their consoles if they could actually sell the processing time. The actual box owner could get a negligeable discount on their online gaming, or just more mods, media, and privelages on the MS/Sony gaming websites. As long as MS/Sony are not paying out too much to the owners of the boxes they could (maybe?) make some money here... and if they can make a decent return on their investment then they'll probably do it, either that or some third party company will approach them
    • I think the problem there is that cell phones are designed in such a way as to minimize the amount of energy used. If there was one place for a processor that didn't use power when it wasn't actually performing calculations, cell phones would be it.

      So to make it happen, consumers would probably have to suffer with shorter battery life or larger batteries. Given how neat everyone thinks it is to have a cell phone which they can lose inside their own ears, I just don't see it happening.

      Maybe something

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