Hello,
I am a PhD student writing a review of online citizen science projects. I want to include a comparison of the computing power of distributed computing vs the world's top supercomputers, but I have a question about how to do this comparison to make sure I'm making an accurate comparison.
The Gridrepublic Stats page (http://www.gridrepublic.org/index.php?page=stats) shows two estimates of distributed computing power. The first estimate appears in the top-right of the page as "Recent Avg" (currently listed as 9812.15 Tflops). The second estimate appears in the list of the world's top supercomputers, above the first supercomputer listed as "All projects available through GridRepublic, in aggregate: 10494403 Gflops". These estimates are similar but not equal and I want to know why.
I appreciate whatever help people can offer me. Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Jay
Did you ever recieve an answer?
You should be able to get a technical answer from contacting the GridRepublic developers directly http://www.gridrepublic.org/contact
Thank you, Spark, for your reply. I never did get an answer to my question, but decided not to pursue it because in my research I decided to just give a rough summary of computing power comparison between distributed computing and supercomputers, rather than use precise numbers. Thank you for the suggestion though.
Thank you Spark. I used the Top500 data for supercomputers. It is similar (but more recent) than the supercomputer data provided on the GridComputing stats page. My goal is to provide a rough comparison between the aggregate power of the distributed computing network and the most powerful supercomputer in the world, to convey the potential power of distributed computing to a non-technical audience. I used supercomputer data from TOP500 (www.top500.org with Nov. 2010 data set). Computing power refers to maximal LINPACK performance achieved. Currently I have the following statement, and I welcome any feedback or suggestions you have on it. I know there are caveats galore in comparing supercomputer and distributed computing power, but from what I understand my statement is accurate albeit imprecise.
"At the time of writing, the distributed computing network is approximately four times as powerful as the most powerful supercomputer in the world (www.gridrepublic.org/index.php?page=stats accessed Jan. 14, 2011)."
Your statement is fairly accurate I would say to get the point across.
I would be very much interested in reading your thesis when you are done. I a Masters Student at the Univeristy of Michigan and have been invovled in volunteer computing since 1999 and currently helping GridRepubic. You can reach me through my Google Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/brierjon
My goal is to provide a rough comparison between the aggregate power of the distributed computing network and the most powerful supercomputer in the world, to convey the potential power of distributed computing to a non-technical audience
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