What is 'Distributed Computing'（分布式计算）?
Most computers aren't using all their computing power at a given time. Even when you are engaged in a game, creating graphics, surfing the web, you may only be employing a fraction of your machine's available computing power. According to Microsoft's research report, about 80% of PCs' resources are wasted. On the other hand, many global research organizations are in dire need of computation resources, like physics simulation, chemistry analysis, etc. In this case, a new technology named 'Distributed computing' came out, which utilize the Internet to save the individual computers' wasted power and put them into use.
There are many distributed computing projects in the world, like the famous SETI@home 'search for extratellurian intelligence', Folding@home(protein chemistry project), fightAIDS@home(research for treatments for AIDS), climate-prediction(simulates global weather in future 50 years), etc.
What is 'Grid computing'(网格计算）?
Grid computing is a form of distributed computing that involves coordinating and sharing computing, application, data, storage, or network resources across dynamic and geographically dispersed organizations. Grid technologies promise to change the way organizations tackle complex computational problems. However, the vision of large scale resource sharing is not yet a reality in many areas — Grid computing is an evolving area of computing, where standards and technology are still being developed to enable this new paradigm.
What is 'United Devices(UD)'?
The United Devices is a solution to the Grid computing technology. Like previous SETI@home, UD is another huge distributed computing project. The difference between UD and previous projects is that UD is not only a solution to one science project, but a platform that can perform multiple research simultaneously. Take this moment(January, 9th, 2005) for an example, UD is performing two projects: Cancer Research project & Rosetta project(a human proteome folding project, research human gene - related issues) . Since I am using UD, so I highly recommend you to use it. ^_^
The meaning of distributed computing
I guess many readers are already aware of the meaning of distributed computing. That is dedication. Science has helped human beings to progress for thousands of years, from the stone age to the information age. Now, with distributed computing, a revolution for science research has come. Every one in the world can participate global science research without professional knowledge or equipment. The only thing you have to do is to download a program. Personally i believe this is far more meaningful than blood donation. Come on!!! Join us!!! Dedicate to mankind!!!
How to join distributed computing?
This is very simple. Since all distributed computing solutions are quite similar to join, let's just take UD for an example, you only have to do the following things:
1. Go to the main page(
www.grid.org), and download the UD program. Distributed computing programs are usually pretty small, less than 10MB.
2. Install the program into your computer.
That's all there is to it. The UD program will detect when you are online, will download a task, and will begin working on it using your PC's idle resources, even while you continue to use your computer for your usual activities. And, unless you choose to view the program, you won't even know the UD program is there. By viewing the program, uou can also see the progress of a task and review the computational activity of your computer. According to my experience, a task normally takes about 12 hours to complete(varies with CPU).
--- some information is referenced from
www.grid.org--- for further information about Distributed Computing/Grid Computing, please visit
www.grid.org
