GPU, a Global Processing Unit

This is a preview of what is being built right now. Super C.R.A.P is an acronym for Super Cluster Ready At Processing, core of the system is a Rollin KVM switch with 8 outputs (VGA, mouse, keyboard) bought for 218 CHF (=140 €). Additionally, 8 cables ... [More] with VGA, mouse and keyboard are needed (each one costs about 15 €). An old 10 MBit Ethernet Switch will provide connectivity to the nodes of the cluster. The cluster which now features 4 computers (2 XP, 1 Gentoo and 1 Sun) will be extended to 8 computers, all computers are coming from people who substituted their one and therefore are a little bit old, but very cheap (got them for free). The Rollin KVM Switch does not support the Sun Ultrasparc, so it will be put up separately. The cluster will be both a showcase and a sounding board for GPU. Particular care will be needed when operating the 8 computers simultaneously, the necessary power will be taken from different phases. Estimated consumption is about 8x500W + 200 W (LCD screen) = 4200 W which is quite a big oven :-) The cluster should be fully operational for beginning of 2010. [Less]

The first one is from nanobit who fortunately rejoined the project: to use a script engine (e.g the one of Thexa4 released with 0.9256) as basis for distributed stored procedures. Stored procedures are a well-known thing for people working with ... [More] databases, they are most of the time SQL procedures stored for convenience in what a database system can administer at best: a table with a column for the row number and another for the lines of the script. Using the distributed WAN database firstly introduced by nanobit in 0.943 joined with the stored procedure concept would allow another way of doing distributed computing with one major advance: it is possible for the user to distribute new code in almost real time. The second one is to have sensors which broadcast collected data via GPU to the nodes. A special frontend collects data and filters it by sensor types (e.g earthquake sensors, temperature, insulation) and by streamers (the nodes which have a sensor attached and which broadcast its data). There is a prototype on CVS and we have two earthquake sensors, one in Holland and one in Switzerland. It will take a fairly amount of time and development effort until GPU people will be able to look at both signals and to compare them and average them. The averaging effect should in principle remove noise from the signal (like bus, or neighbour walking around). 0.9253 introduces an important bugfix in the milestoning mechanism of Eternity II plugin. Duncan White kindly reported it, and helped to test it. And we still are working on the duplicate packets issue which plagues the GPU network since 2004. Maybe this time we will find a solution, at least we identified once for all in source code where the problem is. Last but not least, this news is written with the 100$ laptop, a dream who is becoming true,see http://www.olpcnews.com 0.953 will be release at mid March. Keep an eye on the ChangeLog on CVS for the latest details. 0.952 released -------------- 0.952 is released on sourceforge.net. It contains important fixes to the connection layer done by Alex Fihman. This should be the most stable GPU ever. Additionally, the command: 'add', whichplugin will tell that basic.dll is the plugin that implements the function add. This will help users in deciding which plugins to unload, if some kind of jobs creates problems. [Less]

During last month GPU experienced a short popularity blast with at least 20 nodes online all the time and with peaks of 25-26 nodes. Though this blast finished (now we have 10-15 nodes as usual in the last two years), the blast brought new ... [More] improvements in the way the community can work together to achieve the goal of a flexible Internet Supercomputer. Thanks to everclear64, GPU is availabe as torrent and can be downloaded with a Torrent client like ABC (available at http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net ). The GPU torrent itself can be downloaded at http://www.tek-zone.com/gpu/GPU.torrent . The GPU project also got a wiki at http://www.gpu-grid.net/wiki as home to collaborative notes about the project, powered by MediaWiki. MediaWiki powers not only Wikipedia, but it is used also in other important projects like One Laptop Per Child. Thexa4 and everclear64 started filling it with some content available on the official website. If you want to help, you can open an account on the wiki and add your own content. A deltasql was added to the project ( http://deltasql.sourceforge.net ). Deltasql is a tool that helps managing databases, a Database Version Control. As more server side components are added like the File Distributor, deltasql will help keep track of the database schemas. A JobPipe and ResultCollector component are planned and will be released during 2008. Finally, Thierry noticed a mistake in how the Eternity plugin places the central piece. Its rotation is wrong in 0.950. The mistake was introduced in 0.9493, during a small refactoring introduced for the hints support. The problem is fixed with 0.9502 which is available on Tools->Autoupdate to latest version in the main GPU window. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! [Less]

GPU in its latest version 0.949 has a new plugin written by Alex Fihman called Monotone Boolean Functions (mbf.dll). The plugin attempts to approximate Dedekind's problem by means of a Monte Carlo approximation. This is the first "real-world" GPU ... [More] plugin that tries to solve a mathematical problem. More information on this plugin can be found at http://www.fihman.com/mbf/mbf.html 0.949 also contains Thexa4's Script Engine, which is a novel frontend written in Visual Basic. This frontend adds scripting capabilities to the GPU stack language. It handles GPU answers from different nodes as a set with unique elements, stored into particular variables. The frontend has also loop and echo support. For more about the GPU stack language go to http://gpu.sourceforge.net/virtual.php 0.949 is also released with tons of bugfixes: in particular long strings were producing Access Violations (fixed by Alex Fihman), a memory leak was discovered. The job modifiers as described in chapter 5.4 of gpu_ext.pdf were not working. The upgrade from the lite to the full version did not work for the Orbit Reconstruction Extension. New entry nodes are added (Thexa4 and hisoka), and guevara is moved to a more accessible port (8080). Double clicking in chat was not opening a search browser anymore. The mailing list menu item is replaced by a Wiki one. In the current version on autoupdate (0.9491), the total uptime bugfix is solved. If the period July, September was very bad, the period October, November revealed itself as one of the most proficous for the project :-) Stay tuned [Less]

Eternity II plugin ------------------ On autoupdate there is a new GPU plugin which can help people solving the Eternity II puzzle. Eternity II is a puzzle with 256 pieces, which have to be placed on a 16x16 board. Each squared piece has 4 faces ... [More] with a particular sign on it. Adiacent faces of neighboured pieces need the same sign. A 2 million $ price will be paid to the first valid solution submitted to the puzzle creators. A much simpler online demo of Eternity II is available at http://uk.eternityii.com/try-eternity2-online/ The presentation of Eternity II with Lucy Pinder as youtube video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzjIctATZs8 Instructions to install the Eternity II plugin inside GPU are here: http://gpu.sourceforge.net/eternity.php Network ------- In June, a lightning hit one of the entry nodes (spartacus). Damages included the windows partition configuration files and the water cooling pump. After that until mid September, only Laurent's lwm-media node was available as entry node, the GPU network never was so close to shutdown. In September, Ninja tried to revive spartacus, but also the processor turned out to be burned. Ninja then upgraded the guevara node (an AMD Athlon 700 MHz) with low-noise fans and recovered DVD and 1Gig-Ethernet card from spartacus. An attempt to install Windows Vista failed due to the much more restrictive Genuine program. Therefore guevara is now running Debian 4.0 with wine and will act as entry node for GPU in the future. Next scheduled release ---------------------- 0.948 will be released only in mid November. Have fun! [Less]

First, the GPU organization thanks Laurent Wattieaux ( http://www.lwm-media.org ) for mantaining an own FTP server where occasional users can upload the Terragen images computed by the GPU network. After the file distributor, a new paradigm ... [More] ideated and implemented by nanobit (René Tegel) enters into the GPU arena. Technically implemented as two new plugins called pwansrw.dll and gpu2pwandb.dll, the P2P WAN database uses environment variables, which can be synchronized between 2 nodes or the entire network by using hashes. The paradigm is powerful and could be used to exchange results of computations between nodes without having any loss of data. The distributed P2P WAN DB is described in the document pwandb_paper.odt.doc, to be found in the docs folder. Several other improvements followed the release of 0.938. - 0.939 introduced user management into the File Distributor (user statistics are planned in a future release). - 0.940 introduced XML messages for netmapper. Due to the switch, version prior to 0.940 cannot see each other and vice versa. This lead also to a simplification of the code. - 0.941 was released only on autoupdate, its purpose being to stabilize the distributed P2P WAN DB plugin, which was crashing on some platforms - 0.942 introduced the Distributed P2P WAN DB by nanobit - 0.943 has a new screensaver with zooming and autoupdate information, fixes for the Vista and Linux Wine platform, and meanings to update the lite version to a full version. The project finally sketched a roadmap, which can be found at http://gpu.sourceforge.net/roadmap.php As usual, we thank all people who sustain the network by running the GPU client and who feed us with new ideas and source code. [Less]

Eternity II plugin ------------------ On autoupdate there is a new GPU plugin which can help people solving the Eternity II puzzle. Eternity II is a puzzle with 256 pieces, which have to be placed on a 16x16 board. Each squared piece has 4 faces ... [More] with a particular sign on it. Adiacent faces of neighboured pieces need the same sign. A 2 million $ price will be paid to the first valid solution submitted to the puzzle creators. A much simpler online demo of Eternity II is available at http://uk.eternityii.com/try-eternity2-online/ The presentation of Eternity II with Lucy Pinder as youtube video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzjIctATZs8 Instructions to install the Eternity II plugin inside GPU are here: http://gpu.sourceforge.net/eternity.php Network ------- In June, a lightning hit one of the entry nodes (spartacus). Damages included the windows partition configuration files and the water cooling pump. After that until mid September, only Laurent's lwm-media node was available as entry node, the GPU network never was so close to shutdown. In September, Ninja tried to revive spartacus, but also the processor turned out to be burned. Ninja then upgraded the guevara node (an AMD Athlon 700 MHz) with low-noise fans and recovered DVD and 1Gig-Ethernet card from spartacus. An attempt to install Windows Vista failed due to the much more restrictive Genuine program. Therefore guevara is now running Debian 4.0 with wine and will act as entry node for GPU in the future. Next scheduled release ---------------------- 0.948 will be released only in mid November. Have fun! [Less]

The File Distributor component ( hosted at http://www.gpu-grid.net/file_distributor ) grew into a complete solution to distribute work units and applications, suitable for small-sized projects. The GPU plugin integrates with it, and a standalone ... [More] client is available as well. The PHP set is now used to collect computer information on the cluster. The hope is that this data will help to understand the current scalability issues. With 0.946, projects with Single Work Unit set (typical for rendering projects) are supported. Below the release notes for the last three releases: 0.946: - Important File Distributor Plugin bugfixes - FD server with computer/user/team statistics - FD server and plugin with Single Work Unit Set support - GPU core reports periodically status to FD server (will be used later to create better clusters). 0.945 File Distributor plugin and standalone client ready for tests in the GPU community. Possibility to distribute applications as .zip files. Uploading results to a FTP server. 0.944 Stability improved (no out of memory errors) / PHP File Distributors enhanced: XML jobs, possibility to upload work units as zip files, possibility to upload applications as .zip files, ftp upload settings / File Distributor GPU plugin still in work... This is mainly a release for production purposes. [Less]

GPU in its latest version 0.949 has a new plugin written by Alex Fihman called Monotone Boolean Functions (mbf.dll). The plugin attempts to approximate Dedekind's problem by means of a Monte Carlo approximation. This is the first "real-world" GPU ... [More] plugin that tries to solve a mathematical problem. More information on this plugin can be found at http://www.fihman.com/mbf/mbf.html 0.949 also contains Thexa4's Script Engine, which is a novel frontend written in Visual Basic. This frontend adds scripting capabilities to the GPU stack language. It handles GPU answers from different nodes as a set with unique elements, stored into particular variables. The frontend has also loop and echo support. For more about the GPU stack language go to http://gpu.sourceforge.net/virtual.php 0.949 is also released with tons of bugfixes: in particular long strings were producing Access Violations (fixed by Alex Fihman), a memory leak was discovered. The job modifiers as described in chapter 5.4 of gpu_ext.pdf were not working. The upgrade from the lite to the full version did not work for the Orbit Reconstruction Extension. New entry nodes are added (Thexa4 and hisoka), and guevara is moved to a more accessible port (8080). Double clicking in chat was not opening a search browser anymore. The mailing list menu item is replaced by a Wiki one. In the current version on autoupdate (0.9491), the total uptime bugfix is solved. If the period July, September was very bad, the period October, November revealed itself as one of the most proficous for the project :-) Stay tuned [Less]

The File Distributor component ( hosted at http://www.gpu-grid.net/file_distributor ) grew into a complete solution to distribute work units and applications, suitable for small-sized projects. The GPU plugin integrates with it, and a standalone ... [More] client is available as well. The PHP set is now used to collect computer information on the cluster. The hope is that this data will help to understand the current scalability issues. With 0.946, projects with Single Work Unit set (typical for rendering projects) are supported. Below the release notes for the last three releases: 0.946: - Important File Distributor Plugin bugfixes - FD server with computer/user/team statistics - FD server and plugin with Single Work Unit Set support - GPU core reports periodically status to FD server (will be used later to create better clusters). 0.945 File Distributor plugin and standalone client ready for tests in the GPU community. Possibility to distribute applications as .zip files. Uploading results to a FTP server. 0.944 Stability improved (no out of memory errors) / PHP File Distributors enhanced: XML jobs, possibility to upload work units as zip files, possibility to upload applications as .zip files, ftp upload settings / File Distributor GPU plugin still in work... This is mainly a release for production purposes. [Less]