Computer Action Team (CAT) managed school computers at Portland State University (PSU) in Portland, Oregon may run with little-no workloads being run on them. This period is known as Idle Compute Time. Idle Compute Time is an economic and environmental issue that has been addressed through projects such as the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) and World Community Grid (WCG). These projects give idle computers workloads to perform, with little-no extra cost as these computers are already running. The PSU Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and PSU CS Graduate Student Organization (GSO) propose that many parties would benefit (see below for a quick summary of benefits) -- PSU, the research society, the environment, etc. -- if CAT installed this software on their machines. Visit our full explanation at the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZTexXIV3ux1C1B...
Benefits:
- Put CAT's idle computer time to use
- Power scientific research
- No longer waste computational power and electricity from CAT's computers when they are not being used
- Get more value/return on investment (ROI) out of CAT's high-end computer systems
- Encourage more scientific research involving distributed computing
- Make the CECS a leader in the distributed computing field
- Eliminate the need for expensive supercomputers for many research projects
- More quickly make scientific discoveries
- Set a precedent for future PSU research projects
- Create a system so that other colleges/universities or organizations can easily donate their idle computer time
- Promote the CECS and the sponsoring organization among the research community
- Provide future funding to CAT and the sponsoring organization (for every Prime number that we find)
- Provide national media coverage to PSU, the CECS and the sponsoring organization (for every Prime number that we find)
- Encourage students to donate their own idle computer time
- CAT can more quickly find and fix hardware issues before they affect students (example)
6 Comments
There are several reasons why this is terrible: 1) We will be running software that can cause problems with our systems. Time spend resolving these issues is less time fixing issues that impact students directly. 2) We would make our computers more vulnerable to the outside world. Firewall rules would be modified for access and the program itself needs permissions that would be attractive to a person making a botnet or a crypto-mining operation. 3) This increases the wear and tear on our systems. Things being what they are the school is already stretched thin. This would make things even worse. 4) A computer under load and a computer at idle do not have negligible power differences. Further increasing the cost of running this program. 5) It does not matter how careful they program is, it will impact users. Especially bursty operations (ie compiling XV6 for CS333). While the ability of making use of waste is laudable, there needs to be more benefit to the school than what is listed here.
Of course, this is obvious!
Lets crunch Primes!
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Computer Action Team (CAT) managed school computers at Portland State University (PSU) in Portland, Oregon may run with little-no workloads being run on them. This period is known as Idle Compute Time. Idle Compute Time is an economic and environmental issue that has been addressed through projects such as the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) and World Community Grid (WCG). These projects give idle computers workloads to perform, with little-no extra cost as these computers are already running. The PSU Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and PSU CS Graduate Student Organization (GSO) propose that many parties would benefit (see below for a quick summary of benefits) -- PSU, the research society, the environment, etc. -- if CAT installed this software on their machines. Visit our full explanation at the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZTexXIV3ux1C1B...
Benefits:
- Put CAT's idle computer time to use
- Power scientific research
- No longer waste computational power and electricity from CAT's computers when they are not being used
- Get more value/return on investment (ROI) out of CAT's high-end computer systems
- Encourage more scientific research involving distributed computing
- Make the CECS a leader in the distributed computing field
- Eliminate the need for expensive supercomputers for many research projects
- More quickly make scientific discoveries
- Set a precedent for future PSU research projects
- Create a system so that other colleges/universities or organizations can easily donate their idle computer time
- Promote the CECS and the sponsoring organization among the research community
- Provide future funding to CAT and the sponsoring organization (for every Prime number that we find)
- Provide national media coverage to PSU, the CECS and the sponsoring organization (for every Prime number that we find)
- Encourage students to donate their own idle computer time
- CAT can more quickly find and fix hardware issues before they affect students (example)
6 Comments
Seems like a total no brainer given how much power those machines are burning anyway. Why not put it to good use?
There are several reasons why this is terrible: 1) We will be running software that can cause problems with our systems. Time spend resolving these issues is less time fixing issues that impact students directly. 2) We would make our computers more vulnerable to the outside world. Firewall rules would be modified for access and the program itself needs permissions that would be attractive to a person making a botnet or a crypto-mining operation. 3) This increases the wear and tear on our systems. Things being what they are the school is already stretched thin. This would make things even worse. 4) A computer under load and a computer at idle do not have negligible power differences. Further increasing the cost of running this program. 5) It does not matter how careful they program is, it will impact users. Especially bursty operations (ie compiling XV6 for CS333). While the ability of making use of waste is laudable, there needs to be more benefit to the school than what is listed here.
Of course, this is obvious!
Lets crunch Primes!
I support this endeavor.
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Seems like a total no brainer given how much power those machines are burning anyway. Why not put it to good use?