[moonmonkey]

This is my idea which I would like to see rolled into the next big OS version.

Basically apple provides an API which programmers can hook into.
Designed for processor intensive software (3D rendering, HD video editing etc).

Users could buy credits to allow them to borrow CPU time off other macs on the net with the system turned on, half the world is asleep at any given time, and electricity is cheaper at night.

eg.
If I have a 24 hour render job, I buy XXX gigaflops (or whatever) from Apple, start the render, the API splits up the job between 24 (or 24,000) currently unused computers on the net, encrypts it distributes it, collates the results, decrypts it and I get the render in 1 hour instead of 24 hours.

Each of the 24 unused computers would get a share of the $$ dependent on how much work they did, so you computer could sit there when you are not using it and make money for you by helping Pixar render a new movie, you could then use this money to get pixars render farm to help render your FCP project when you need it, or spend it on sweets and stickers etc.

There are obviously issues that would need to be overcome, but it would change the way we use computers and help the environment.

Any thoughts?

[Cold Warrior]

I thought this was already being done, just not by apple.

[besson3c]

Yeah, this is all very cool, but Apple is the last company I would expect to be involved with something like this. My first bet would be Sun.

[peeb]

Couldn't this be done pretty easily? I mean the whole BOINK / SETI stuff looks like the tech is there already - aren't you talking about some relatively small change? Sounds cool though.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Yeah, this is all very cool, but Apple is the last company I would expect to be involved with something like this. My first bet would be Sun.

Absolutely. Sun came to my mind as well.

BOINC is already pretty close apart form the commercial thing. And if you're simply interested in distributing stuff across different CPUs Xgrid or MPI (if it's for more than just Macs) is what you're looking for.

[besson3c]

Don't you need a pretty high performance network for this to work well? What if somebody has a really slow connection or some area of the network is saturated? This would have to work in a BitTorrent-like fashion, being savvy about what network node to use.

[C.A.T.S. CEO]

This does sound like a good idea, but I don't think it would take off on the web, but maybe local networks. A university could have students rent out their machines at certain times a day to render video, run calculations, etc and those students could get a discount on tuition. (Doesn't this sound like BOINC?)

It would be cool if I could do it on my local network.

[ginoledesma]

Sun already has this service, called Sun Grid, which costs about $1/hour. IBM and Microsoft also have their own counterparts, though I don't know the details. Apple also has something similar with XGrid, but nowhere near the ease-of-use or simplicity that's proposed (on the surface) as originally stated.

[Chuckit]

It seems to me that anybody who could really take advantage of this would probably be have the resources and be better served using their own systems. It's not as though most consumer apps can do massively distributed computing.

[mduell]

1. Too much data to move around for video rendering/encoding and most other tasks where parallelization is easy/obvious.

2. CPU time on your home machine isn't as valuable as you might think it is.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Don't you need a pretty high performance network for this to work well? What if somebody has a really slow connection or some area of the network is saturated? This would have to work in a BitTorrent-like fashion, being savvy about what network node to use.

The feasibility of what the OP suggested has very much to do with what kind of jobs are being considered. Anything that requires low-latency and/or high-bandwidth communication between nodes is obviously out of the question. To my knowledge there aren't many types of distributed jobs that don't require either one. Things like SETI@home come to mind, but I doubt there's much commercial potential there: node owners would likely get too little to make it interesting while job owners would likely have to pay too much compared to the effort and disadvantages of not having more control over the nodes (as is the case when you get CPU time at a dedicated cluster).

[PaperNotes]

Microsoft did this with their Talisman project years ago for 3D rendering and gaming. Since then SETI and other groups have used distributed computing for scientific tasks as we all (should) know. Thing is, computer users for the most part want personal individual power and don't want to be a node in a socialistic network. That's why I would rather have a powerful quad CPU notebook with 1Ghz GPU than lose my autonomy. Once people give up their autonomy for one thing how soon before they easily give it up for another? It's happening already so I want to keep whatever is left personal.

[Simon]

"Node in a socialistic network"?

The OP was talking about you selling your surplus CPU time to a potential buyer.

[peeb]

What is the internet if not a collection of 'nodes in a socialistic network'? Peer to peer, anyone? I don't see the rugged individualists rejecting bittorent...

[PaperNotes]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Peer to peer, anyone? I don't see the rugged individualists rejecting bittorent...

Oddly enough you will see them adore themselves with symbols and avatars of Guevara and other symbols people use when they can't get off their backsides and take some personal responsibility (ok ok now we're getting off topic so let's let sleeping dogs ...sleep). Piracy isn't ruggedly individual. Individual is the filmmaker who gets screwed over by the studio deal on end and the pirates on the other.