[Beowulf] [EXTERNAL] Re: Is Crowd Computing the Next Big Thing?

[Jonathan Aquilina]

Hi Guys,

Given the power of hardware today do projects like LHC project which works on BOINC platform or used to anyway, do they really benefit from using personal users computers?

Regards,
Jonathan



-----Original Message-----
From: Beowulf <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org> On Behalf Of Benson Muite
Sent: 29 November 2019 05:21
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] [EXTERNAL] Re: Is Crowd Computing the Next Big Thing?

There are some machine learning workloads that could be done in this context. Renting smartphones may be more challenging, but desktop or server idle computing power could be used in distributed offline training algorithms.

The physics community does make heavy use of grid computing (https://home.cern/science/computing/worldwide-lhc-computing-grid),
however am not sure of the economics and of many other commercial workloads with similar requirements.

On 11/28/19 10:58 PM, Lux, Jim (US 337K) via Beowulf wrote:
> Don't forget background loads like the cooling fan, losses in the power supply, etc.  Most power supplies (even switchers, unless specifically designed for this) have lower efficiency at lower loads.
>
> On 11/28/19, 12:39 AM, "Beowulf on behalf of Janne Blomqvist" <beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org on behalf of janne.blomqvist at aalto.fi> wrote:
>
>      On 27/11/2019 22.56, Lux, Jim (US 337K) via Beowulf wrote:
>      > With respect to "free cycles" in desktop computers - back in the day, 10-15 years ago, a bunch of folks made measurements on cluster nodes of one sort or another.  As I recall, there *is* a power consumption change between full load and not, but there's a significant "background load" that is more than 50% of the total power consumption.
>      
>      With current hardware, there is a significant difference (at least,
>      assuming the "ipmi-dcmi --get-system-power-statistics" output is
>      correct). On our skylake nodes ("standard 2-socket CPU nodes") idle
>      power is about 50W, when running flat out about 400W.
>      
>      Somewhat older hardware is less good at saving power when idle, Westmere
>      nodes consume about 100W idling. IIRC our old Istanbul Opterons (which
>      we have already thrown away, so can't double-check) consumed about 170W
>      when idle.
>      
>      
>      --
>      Janne Blomqvist
>      
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