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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.
from the working-for-the-man dept.
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)
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)
They aren't? [hardwarezone.com]
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Re:"Unused resources"? (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re:"Unused resources"? (Score:3, Informative)
What planet do you live on?
Because this is changing. Maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:"Unused resources"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Unused resources"? (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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.
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Most people won't do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Unspoken subtext: 'cause they're overpowered (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
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Re:Unspoken subtext: 'cause they're overpowered (Score:3, Funny)
waste power (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I don't play well with the other kids (Score:3, Funny)
Theres a need? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Theres a need? (Score:4, Informative)
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)
Parent
It's the money, stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Not feasible (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It's not exactly a free resource. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Altruism is not the best motivator (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
The future of business computing? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Folding Flaws (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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.
Parent
Not to burst your bubble... (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
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Re:To help who? (Score:5, Interesting)
(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.
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