NOWs and Metacomputing
Use networks of workstations (NOWs) as one big virtual metacomputer
- “poor man’s supercomputer”
- make use of idle time
Successful Projects
- ad hoc systems: e.g., RSA-129 factoring (1994), GIMPS
- general purpose systems: e.g., Condor, PVM, MPI
- recent/ongoing projects: e.g., Legion, Globus, etc.
Problems
- difficult to set up
- requires giving out accounts
- can take days, weeks, months to install
- cannot be used by normal user