GPU, a Global Processing Unit

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 ideated ... [More] 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]

What started like a little taunt suddenly got another dimension. The GPU project has modified the GPL license a little by adding Asimov's first law of robotics. Meanwhile, we have been written be members of the Free Software Foundation, asking us ... [More] to reconsider the change or at least not violate their copyright by removing the preamble and altering the name. We are aware modifying the GPL is not allowed by the GPL license itself, but did it without bad intentions. We go consider what is appropiate. After all, we're not after a legal conflict with the FSF. Give us some time for internal debate, we'll keep you informed. [Less]

After an internal discussion between team members, we decided to release 0.935 with the unmodified (GPL version 2), and to remove the public released versions beginning from 0.910 up to 0.934. This for two main reasons: one is that Sourceforge.net ... [More] hosts only projects that are licensed under the Open Source Definition. The project is not big enough to provide its own CVS and web space. The second one is that GPL cannot be modified without changing its name. So we should have chosen a name like "No military Use Public License". There was discussion going on for the GPL version 3 that regards a restriction for military use. Read for example David Turner's blog: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050211.html Release 0.935 includes a new search plugin and frontend by nanobit, an updated DelphiPackagerTool by DelphiFreak and an attempt to include JPL planets inside Orsa. [Less]

GPU is currently undergoing its 4th rewrite, codenamed freedom (3th was named solaris which reached version 0.963, 2th polaris, 1th unnamed). The preview package has version 0.5.0. This package is solely intended for developers as there is still no ... [More] client working, just a bunch of unit tests.The package is intended to sketch the whole idea of the next generation GPU. Some people might be disappointed that GPU moves away from peer-to-peer to become a client-server architecture, but we believe this is the only drawback. The highlights of the coming release (probably 6 months from now) are:- client/server architecture should allow scaling of nodes up to several thousands of clients- client is in Freepascal and can be compiled on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX- Server is in PHP/mySQL and runs everywhere where LAMP stack runs- All software used to develop GPU II is Open Source and available freely- The plugin architecture of GPU I is retained, although the plugin layer has been rewritten (available in preview) and plugins need to be ported as well- Communication is entirely over HTTP, workunits can be downloaded, and resulting workunits can be uploaded via HTTP back to the server (available on GPU preview package)- HTTP makes GPU transparent to most proxies, so that clients can run also in companies and not only at home - GPU II retains features like channels (to run whiteboard, chat and sensor networks), job management, clustering services, all rewritten in light of the experiences done with GPU I (available on GPU preview package)- GPU II will stay a multipurpose distributed computing architecture, so that any client and any server will support any computation (unlike the BOINC architecture)- Each server should be able to support 40-100 clients according to some initial computations, the network should scale with number of servers- One superserver will manage the whole network of serversThe package contains most of the server, communication layer client and server side, plugin layer clientside.we hope the release will fuel some interest into the GPU project.Have fun! [Less]

0.960: climate simulation simulates vulcano EyjafjallajoekullGPU 0.960 features a simple climate simulation. With the latest update (0.9607) which can be retrieved with the menu "Tools->Autoupdate to latest version" on the main GPU application ... [More] , the climate simulation also shows the path of ashes spread by the vulcano Eyjafjallajökull and the CO2 production of the world population. However, it is difficult to calibrate the parameters of the model. Anyone can try simple tasks like: having a world with stable temperature at 15.5 Celsius, start a nuclear war, move Earth down to Mercury orbit or up to Iupiter, stop earth rotation or revolution, etc.A screenshot of the climate simulation can be seen at https://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=58134&ssid=132912Source code of this frontend can be found under /lib/libclimate and /src/frontend/thedayaftertomorrow. [Less]

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 ... [More] cables 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. (1 comments) [Less]

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. (1 comments) [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.com0.953 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', whichpluginwill 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. (0 comments) [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.com0.953 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', whichpluginwill 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. (0 comments) [Less]