Читать книгу Algorithms For Dummies - John Paul Mueller, John Mueller Paul, Luca Massaron - Страница 17

Unless you have unlimited funds, using some algorithms effectively may not be possible, even with specialized chips. In that case, you can network computers together. Using special software, one computer, a host, can use the processors of all client computers running an agent (a kind of in-memory background application that makes the processor available). Using this approach, you can solve incredibly complex problems by offloading pieces of the problem to a number of client computers. As each computer in the network solves its part of the problem, it sends the results back to the host, which puts the pieces together to create a consolidated answer, a technique called cluster computing.

Lest you think this is the stuff of science fiction, people are using cluster computing techniques (https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/an-overview-of-cluster-computing/) in all sorts of interesting ways. For example, the article at https://turingpi.com/12-amazing-raspberry-pi-cluster-use-cases/ details how you can build your own supercomputer (among other tasks) by combining multiple Raspberry Pi (https://www.raspberrypi.org/) boards into a single cluster.

Distributed computing, another version of cluster computing (but with a looser organization) is also popular. In fact, you can find a list of distributed computing projects at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects. The list of projects includes some major endeavors, such as Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can also donate your computer’s extra processing power to work on a cure for cancer. The list of potential projects is amazing. Most of these projects are hosted by Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (https://boinc.berkeley.edu/), but you can find other sponsors.