1 Jan
2002
1 Jan
'02
11:15 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: <jwbirdsa(a)picarefy.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2001 06:21 PM
Subject: Trailing-edge compute farm seeks gainful employment
Supposing one has a farm of older, relatively
slower machines (Sun-2's,
Sun-3's, early SPARCs, 386es, very small VAXen, 68k-based Macs, etc.)
running various Unixes (mostly NetBSD), networked together and connected
to the Net. What does one do with it?
I've been trying to think of some interesting, moderately useful
distributed-computing project that they could sit and crank away at
and haven't come up with much of anything. All the distributed projects
that I know of are distributed because even fast machines aren't enough by
themselves -- a trailing-edge farm can't make a useful contribution.
If network Tierra (an artificial-life research project) had ever come
to
pass, that would have been a superb application for
these beasts. But it
didn't.
Ideas, anyone? Please?
Point yer browser at
http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed/distrib-projects.html for a short list.
A few caught my eye: Globus looks like it could be very useful, altho perl
5.whatever is needed for part of the install; and DALiworld looks like it
would be pretty neat.
--James B.
Bob