Grid Computing Seminar Series for the Layman

Grid is Good : Unleashing Grid Computing to Power Business,
Education & Life

A Million Years of Computing

Dr. David P. Anderson
Space Sciences Laboratory
University of California at Berkeley, USA

15 May 2006 (Monday)
1900 hours @ National Library Board
Visitors' Briefing Room, Level 1
100 Victoria Street
Singapore 188064

Slides

Abstract

Suppose you're a scientist who uses computers. You've developed a great new program that will revolutionize your research. But you then test your program and discover that it will take a million years to run. Of course, that's impossible - better give up and start over. Right? Not so fast. A new computing paradigm may be able to help. In this approach, called 'volunteer computing', computer owners donate the use of their PCs to scientific research projects. If you can find a million volunteers, and can divide your work into a million separate parts, the job can be finished in one year, not one million.

Volunteer computing is now being used by scientists in many areas, including physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. The BOINC project, based at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, is developing software that makes it easy for scientists to create volunteer computing projects, and for computer owners to participate in these projects. This talk will discuss BOINC and some of the projects using it.

Biodata

Dr. David P. Anderson received graduate degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin. From 1985 to 1992 he served on the faculty of the U.C. Berkeley Computer Science Department. His research interests include volunteer computing, distributed operating systems, real-time and multimedia systems, computer graphics, and computer music. He is currently a Research Scientist at the U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, where he directs the SETI@home and BOINC projects.

Registration

Admission is Free. All are Welcome.
Please click here to register by 1200 hours on 12 May 2006.


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