On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 4:12 PM, Darr <darr@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thursday, 15 July, 2010 @23:21 zulu, Robert Myers scribed:
> You left out the Department of Energy, which is a much biggerWell, it sure would be nice if the DoE spent some of our
> player than the DoD.
tax dollars making applications like the Clean Energy phase
2 task, being run by IBM's World Community Grid project
(http://worldcommunitygrid.org/research/cep2/overview.do )
and Harvard, that would use the GPU[s] from nVidia and ATI.
WCG uses Berkeley's BOINC framework that I mentioned
in my reply to the OP (whose author has not posted again, btw).
However, the applications that run in BOINC must be written
especially to make use of the GPU[s], and not all do (in fact,
none of the applications/tasks currently running at WCG can
use the GPU, and most that do under BOINC are windows-only).
Last time I looked, which is approaching a decade ago, computational solid state physics (as practiced by our bloated national labs) had its own problems, like mispredicting electron mobility in semiconductors by a factor of five.
I've uninstalled BOINC from my own computers because it seemed way too hackable, it has caused problems, and the energy argument (the computer is on, anyway) doesn't really work for modern processors, where it makes a huge difference whether my i7-920's are idling or grinding away on a calculation I am not supervising myself. I also could not find an application I was interested in that would put my pointlessly powerful GPU's to work.
For all the money the DoE spends, you'd think it could come up with a coherent effort to manage the computational resources and needs of the country, including efforts like BOINC. The real trouble is that a project like BOINC (unlike a huge new computer that requires its own building) produces no photo-ops, no facility that senators and members of congress can be taken on a tour of, and no bloated staff to justify a higher civil service rating, larger office, and higher salary.
In theory, there are lots of things that the smart and curious people of a community like the Fedora Project might be doing, but the leadership has to come from somewhere.
Robert.
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