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What is distributed computing? I believe that many inexperienced people are at a loss about this, so this article summarizes the causes and solutions of the problem. Through this article, I hope you can solve this problem.

Distributed computing is a computing method, which is relative to centralized computing. Distributed computing divides the application into many small parts and distributes them to multiple computers for processing, which can save the overall computing time and greatly improve the computational efficiency.

Distributed computing definition

Generalized definition

Study how to divide a problem that requires a great deal of computing power into many small parts, then assign these parts to many computers for processing, and finally synthesize these calculation results to get the final result.

Recent distributed computing projects have been used to use the idle computing power of the computers of thousands of volunteers around the world to analyze electrical signals from outer space and find hidden black holes through the Internet. and explore the possible existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life; can find more than 10 million digits of Mason prime; can also find and find more effective drugs against HIV. These projects are huge and require an astonishing amount of computation, and it is impossible for a single computer or individual to complete the calculation in an acceptable time.

Definition of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Information is shared between two or more software that can run either on the same computer or on multiple computers connected through a network. Compared with other algorithms, distributed computing has the following advantages:

1. Rare resources can be shared.

2. Through distributed computing, the computing load can be balanced on multiple computers.

3. You can put the program on the computer that is most suitable for running it.

Among them, sharing rare resources and balancing load is one of the core ideas of computer distributed computing.

Grid computing

Grid computing is a kind of distributed computing. If a job is distributed, then it must be not just a computer, but a computer network. This way of "ants moving mountains" will have strong data processing ability.

The essence of grid computing is to combine and share resources and ensure system security.

working principle

Distributed computing is a kind of computing science that uses the idle processing capacity of the CPU of computers on the Internet to solve large-scale computing problems. Next, let's see how it works:

First, find a problem that requires a lot of computing power to solve. This kind of problems are generally interdisciplinary, challenging and urgent scientific research topics for human beings. The more famous ones are:

Solve more complex mathematical problems, such as GIMPS (looking for the largest Mason prime).

Research to find the most secure cryptosystem, such as RC-72 (password cracking).

Biopathological studies, such as Folding@home (study of protein folding, misunderstanding, polymerization and related diseases).

Drug research on a variety of diseases, such as United Devices (looking for effective drugs to fight cancer).

Signal processing, such as SETI@Home (searching for extraterrestrial civilizations at home).

In the past, these problems should be solved by supercomputers. However, the cost and maintenance of supercomputers are very expensive, which is beyond the reach of an ordinary scientific research organization. With the development of science, a cheap, efficient and convenient computing method came into being-distributed computing!

With the popularity of computers, personal computers began to enter thousands of households. It is accompanied by the problem of the use of computers. More and more computers are idle, and the potential of the CPU is far from being fully utilized even when it is turned on. We can imagine that a home computer spends most of its time "waiting". Even when users actually use their computers, the processors are still silent consumption and countless waits (waiting for input, but actually doing nothing). With the advent of the Internet, it has become a reality to connect and call all these computer systems with limited computing resources.

Then, some questions that are very complex but suitable to be divided into a large number of smaller computing fragments are raised, and then a research institution develops computing servers and clients through a lot of hard work. The server is responsible for dividing the computing problem into many small computing parts, and then assigning these parts to many networked computers for parallel processing, and finally synthesizing these calculation results to get the final result.

Of course, this may seem primitive and difficult, but with the increasing number of participants and computers involved in computing, computing plans become very fast and have proved to be feasible in practice. At present, the processing capacity of some large distributed computing projects can reach or even exceed that of the fastest supercomputers in the world.

You can also choose to participate in certain projects to donate Cpu kernel processing time, and you will find that the CPU kernel processing time you provide will appear in the project contribution statistics. You can compete with other participants for the ranking of contribution time, or you can join an existing computing group or form your own computing group. This method is very helpful to arouse the enthusiasm of the participants.

With the increasing number of private teams, many large organizations (such as companies, schools and various websites) have begun to form their own teams. At the same time, a large number of communities with the theme of distributed computing technology and project discussion have been formed. most of these communities translate and produce tutorials for distributed computing projects and publish relevant technical articles, and provide necessary technical support.

So who might join these projects? Of course anyone can! If you have joined a project and have considered joining a computing group, you will find your home in the distributed computing hub and forum in China. Anyone can join any distributed computing group set up by our site. I hope you find fun in the distributed terminals and forums in China.

Participating in distributed computing-- one of the most meaningful options to take full advantage of your personal computer-- simply download the program, which will run on the computer with the lowest priority, which has little effect on normal use of the computer. If you want to use your computer's spare time to do something useful, why hesitate? Take action now, your insignificant efforts may enable you to leave a lot of money in the history of human science.

BOINC distributed computing platform

BOINC is the abbreviation of Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, namely Berkeley Open Network Computing platform.

BOINC is a distributed computing platform that can be shared by different distributed computing. Different distributed computing projects can directly use BOINC's public upload and download system, statistical system and so on, which can not only give full play to the coordination between various distributed computing, but also make the management and use of distributed computing more convenient and easy to use.

The BOINC project is sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley (U.C.Berkeley).

The BOINC project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (National Science Foundation).

BOINC has its own points system, because the projects that can be run on BOINC vary widely. For example, the task package of project A (Workunit, referred to as WU) takes 3 hours to complete in a certain machine, while the task package of project B takes 30 hours to complete in this machine. Obviously, it is not feasible to use the number of WU to measure the workload; similarly, there are differences in machine performance, and it is not possible to use CPU time to measure the workload. The integral system can only get the actual amount of calculation completed by the user through a certain algorithm. This paper explains the calculation method of the integral in BOINC.

Distributed Computing in China

According to the statistics of the China Internet Information Center (CNNIC), the proportion of Chinese netizens in the world has increased to about 12%, and is still growing rapidly. The Chinese netizens mentioned here include the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas Chinese.

Compared with the rapid development of the Internet in China, the development of distributed computing in China is slow. In my opinion, the statistics of the number of netizens can not objectively reflect the level of informatization in a country, while the number or proportion of netizens participating in distributed computing can obviously see the level of science popularization in this country. In this respect, there is no doubt that Europe and the United States are in the lead. In the Nordic countries, almost half of all computers participate in distributed computing projects, which is a staggering number. Let's take a look at China and India. Although we have a lot of the latest technology and seem to be doing well in the process of network popularization, we are very weak in distributed computing. Let's look at some examples:

SETI@home is the largest distributed computing project in the world. In terms of the number of participants in China, it is also the most famous project in China. It searches for signs of extraterrestrial life by using a networked computer download program to analyze signals received by radio telescopes.

Although China has made progress in distributed computing and China's international ranking has risen from 29 to 24, we Chinese users have still completed only 1/10 of the work done by Japanese users, while Japan, this highly developed country has fewer Internet users than China. It seems that it is also very important to improve the quality of netizens and the degree of science popularization. India and some Middle Eastern countries also have similar problems, while Central European countries have obviously done a better job in this respect, and the amount of data completed by many CIS countries has exceeded that of the Russian Federation.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project that studies protein folding, misunderstanding, aggregation and related diseases. It uses networked computing methods and a large number of distributed computing power to simulate the process of protein folding, and guides us to study a series of diseases caused by folding.

The number of people participating in the project in China is increasing. By the end of March 2011, the number of users of the China 3213 team reached 3025, with about 190 active users.

Participating in the Climateprediction project is to calculate the latest climate prediction models through computers in homes, schools and offices. The results of these calculations will form the largest weather forecasting model in the world. The climate has changed, and our action on it has become an important topic around the world. This will affect human agricultural production, water resources, ecosystems, energy needs, insurance costs and many other aspects that are closely related to human beings. There is solid scientific evidence that the earth may become warmer in the coming centuries, but we cannot estimate how much it will change. If you participate, this will help with the scientific prediction of climate in the 21st century.

China already has many computers, many of which are extremely advanced in performance. And most of them are just typing and playing slides. It is necessary to say that this is a waste of resources.

From another point of view, it is not difficult to find the gap between developed and developing countries. We call this phenomenon the digital divide. Another equally distressing phenomenon is that all distributed computing projects are initiated by developed countries, such as the United States, Germany, Britain, Japan and so on, which have also deepened the scientific divide. Professor Gorham Richard Cherman of Stanford University's Department of Chemistry says distributed computing will accelerate the scientific process of mankind as a whole. Scientists can accomplish computing tasks that they never thought they would do before, or that would take decades and hundreds of years to complete. This is true, but to some extent, this calculation has contributed to the scientific monopoly in developed countries.

Chinese authorities have also begun to realize the importance of distributed computing, and some university professors and scientists have also begun to delve into distributed computing science, such as the CAS@HOME of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Qingshui Project of Tsinghua University.

After reading the above, have you mastered what distributed computing is? If you want to learn more skills or want to know more about it, you are welcome to follow the industry information channel, thank you for reading!

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