The incredible power of today’s supercomputers has already been discussed in some detail in this past post. These behemoths are large and expensive to operate. As such, their potential might seem out of reach for the average small to medium-size business.
This is true to a degree, but there are ways around the problem. Companies such as Amazon.com, which in 2006 introduced its Elastic Compute Cloud initiative, have begun to address this issue and are now renting access to massive computing power for as little as 10 cents per CPU hour. This means that 700 CPUs can be had for as little as $70.
In practical terms, this means a one-time problem that could benefit from having a few billion calculations run on its behalf can now be done fairly easily. IBM is also beginning to make supercomputing available to the masses.
One firm that took advantage of IBM’s program potential was SmartOps, a small company specializing in inventory optimization for other companies. It had a problem that involved over 70,000 SKUs (stock keeping units). Running the problem with a regular computer would have taken six hours, but with the help of an IBM supercomputer the problem was solved in seventeen seconds. The task proved so efficient that the company began to experiment with how other variables might impact the inventory, and quickly it was able to construct an even better solution.
If renting such computing power is still beyond your means, there is, again, the kindness of strangers. It might amaze you to know that the amount of computing power sitting idle in America at any given moment is the equivalent of thousands of supercomputers. Innovative organizations and individuals are now tapping into this power by asking people to use their computers when the owners are not using them.
The best known example is SETI@home, which is using over 1.2 million home computers to process signals from outer space in its search for intelligence life. A slightly more down-to-earth application can be found in the example of David Baker, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, who is “walking the escalator” and is using distributed computing to search for a cure for cancer.
After his wife was diagnosed with cancer, Baker began looking for a solution to her problem. To pursue his research he realized that he needed an incredible amount of computing power. Not being a wealthy man, he put his request for computing assistance out on the Internet. Today he has more than 60,000 computers toiling away on his behalf, and he hopes to increase the number tenfold in the future.
To benefit from this approach, one doesn’t always need access to ten of thousands of computers. In the spring of 2006, Stefan Krah, an amateur code breaker, was occupied with cracking an old, unbroken Nazi code from World War II. Like Baker, Krah laid out his problem on the Internet and explained why he needed some extra computing power. Within a day he had five computers, and shortly thereafter 2,500 people had deemed his project of enough interest that they allowed Krah to use their computers. In almost no time, the computers quickly ran through 150 million permutations and cracked the code. All it revealed was the location of a long decommissioned (or destroyed) German submarine, but one can see the potential of the application of distributed computing for science and business in the next decade.
Exponential Insight
Searching for extraterrestrials and deciphering old World War II codes may not be on the top of everyone’s agenda. However, the fact that people are pursuing such tasks and, more importantly, that thousands of people are willing to open their computers to help find the solution indicates that not possessing a supercomputer is an insufficient reason for standing on the escalator. Who knows? By tapping into the power of computers you just might find something that is out of this world or discover a small secret that could help you in your next battle with your competitors.
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