Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer network managing – Network resource allocating
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-31
2004-06-29
Burgess, Glenton B. (Department: 2153)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer network managing
Network resource allocating
C709S201000, C709S203000, C709S244000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06757730
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to the fields of distributed computing and Internet-based applications and services. More particularly, the invention relates to methods, apparatus and articles-of-manufactures relating to the collection, organization, maintenance, management and commercial exploitation of network-connected, distributed computing resources.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Distributed (or parallel) computing is a well-established field. Over the past few decades, thousands of distributed computing architectures have been proposed, and hundreds gave been constructed and evaluated.
Distributed computing architectures are typically characterized as being either “coarse-grained” or “fine-grained,” depending upon the size or complexity of the individual processing elements (or “nodes”) that perform the computational work. In a typical coarse-grained, distributed computing architecture, the individual processing elements are generally fully functional computing elements, such as single-chip microprocessors, capable of individually performing a variety of useful tasks. The fine-grained approach, by contrast, typically relies on a large number of processing elements, each of which has very limited computational capabilities.
Perhaps the best known fine-grained parallel architecture is The Connection Machine, manufactured by the now-defunct Thinking Machines Corporation. In The Connection Machine, thousands of very-simple processing elements were connected by a highly-efficient message-routing network. Even though individual processing elements lacked the ability to perform much useful on their own, the efficiency of the message-routing network made it possible to cooperatively deploy large numbers of processing elements, on certain problems.
Unlike The Connection Machine, coarse-grained parallel computing systems seldom have the luxury of communication networks that operate with latencies at, or near, the clock speed of individual processing elements. The more sophisticated processing elements used in a coarse-grained distributed processing systems typically cannot be packed into a small volume, like a single chip, board or chassis. As a result, communications must travel across chip-to-chip, board-to-board, or even chassis-to-chassis boundaries, as well as greater physical distances, all of which causes inherent and unavoidable increases in latency. Because of these inherent communication limitations, coarse-grained parallel architectures have, for many years, been viewed by persons skilled in the art as useful only for “computationally intensive”—as opposed to “communication intensive”—tasks. A typical computationally intensive task is prime factorization of large integers.
Recently, there have been several efforts to exploit the resources of the world's largest coarse-grained distributed computing system—the Internet. The thrust of these efforts has been to apply traditional coarse-grained distributed processing approaches to utilize idle processing resources connected to the World-Wide Web (“www”). The first reported application of these www-based methods was signal analysis, as part of a search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (“SETI”). Several years later, a group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, described the use of web-based distributed parallelism for prime factorization, and other computationally intensive problems. Both of these reported prior-art efforts clearly embrace and exemplify traditional, coarse-grained parallelism thinking, namely, that such parallelism is only useful for computationally intensive, as opposed to communication intensive, problems. See G. Moritz,
SETI and Distributed Computing
, www.people.fas.harvard.edu/{tilde over ( )}gmoritz/papers/s7.html (1998) (“Distributed computing is well suited to the search for extraterrestrial civilizations for several reasons. First, the problem itself consists of small blocks of data which each require a large amount of processing. Since CPU time, not bandwidth, is the major requirement of the SERENDIP data analysis, distributed computing via the Internet will be very feasible”); A. D. Alexandrov,
SuperWeb: Towards a Global Web
-
Based Parallel Computing Infrastructure
, citeseer.nj.nec.com/cachedpage/80115 (1997), at 1 (“We expect this approach to work well for non-communication intensive applications, such as prime number factorization, Monte-Carlo and coarse-grained simulations, and others”).
The explosive growth of the Web over the past few years has created a huge demand for high-performance, web-centric computing services. Today, such services are typically rendered using mainframe computers (or other high-performance servers), connected to the Web via a T1 line (operating at 1.544 Mb/s). Unfortunately, T1 connectivity is very costly.
At the same time, consumers are increasingly migrating toward high-bandwidth, always-on Web connections, such as those offered by DSL and cable-modem providers. The inventors herein have observed that, as consumer connections to the Internet get faster and cheaper, the ratio of bandwidth-to-cost is far more favorable in the consumer (e.g., DSL and cable-modem) market than in the high-performance corporate (e.g., T1) market. In other words, even at the present time, individuals with high-speed Internet connections are paying far less per unit of bandwidth than high-demand corporate users of T1 lines. Moreover, economies of scale are likely to further drive-down the cost of mass-marketed, high-speed Internet connections, thus making the existing cost disparity even greater.
Accordingly, it would be highly desirable if users of high-performance, web-centric computing services could take advantage of the increasingly cheaper, high-speed, mass-marketed Internet connection services. It would also be highly desirable if such users could take advantage of the millions of often-idle computing resources (e.g., PCs, workstations and other devices) linked to the Internet through such always-on, high-speed, mass-marketed connections. Finally, it would be highly-desirable if owners of such often-idle computing resources could be compensated for use of their resource' always-on, high-speed Internet connections during otherwise idle periods of time. The invention, as described below, satisfies these and other needs.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In light of the above, one object of the present invention relates to software infrastructure designed to capture a generalized problem-solving capability, handle data throughputs in excess of 100× the productivity of the SETI effort, require no access to a worker's local disk drive (to assuage security concerns) and motivate retail Internet users to participate by paying them in cash or higher-value non-monetary compensation (frequent flyer miles, lottery, discounted products/services, etc.).
Another object of the invention relates to a distributed networking software system that enables thousands, potentially scaled to millions, of consumer PCs on the Internet to be networked together to function as a Virtual Super Computer (“VSC”).
Another object of the invention relates to a distributed networking software system that enables a “CPU/bandwidth” website exchange to be operated, which web site anonymously and securely brokers demand from web-centric applications seeking integrated (i) data processing and/or (ii) high-bandwidth access to the Internet with retail supply of such resources. Such “brokering” platform aggregates CPU capability at a commercially-significant unit cost advantage versus the equivalent CPU horsepower of a high-end supercomputer, and aggregates Internet bandwidth access at a commercially-significant cost advantage versus T1, T3, or OC3 high-speed connectivity.
Another object of the invention relates to a distributed networking software system that enables on-demand computing power, with functionality similar to an electric utility, where corporate users can “plug in” to the network's website exchange for powering a wide range of web applications, thereb
Bernardin James
Lee Peter
Burgess Glenton B.
DataSynapse, Inc.
Parton Kevin
Patterson, Belknap
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