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Commercial Viability of ‘ Off-Peak ’ Distributed Computing at a Tertiary Institution – a Progress Report

Did you ever wonder what happens to the computers at work once everyone goes home? Not much – except for a few individuals helping to look for extraterrestrial signals! Ever think about what a waste it is to have all those computers doing nothing? All that money in most cases doing nothing! So, why not use this wasted resource? Working together, these many PC’s can make a very powerful computer – potentially a super computer! This large processing capability is accomplished by distributed computing. Distributed computing is basically any computing that involves multiple computers across a network, where each computer (or node) has a role in solving computationally intensive problems. UCOL Palmerston North has many hundreds of computers throughout its campus. Each night these computers sit idle or are off. There is considerable potential to exploit these computers during the time when they are not in use to earn an income through the selling of computing power; or at the very least partner with researchers or industry for a symbiotic relationship. Distributed computing is not new to academia. Academic institutions are the fertile ground from whence they sprung. But what is not common, is the use of academia’s core business (i.e. education) computers being used by industry for a profit. This is where this project is aimed. As the project has been going for a while, but is far from over, a progress report is in order. This paper will give a snapshot of where the project is at by: > Explaining the basics of distributed computing > Showing the initial aim of the project > Discussing project directions that have been successful and not so successful > Looking ahead at “where to from here”