Personally, I don't think this is much of an issue as a "criminal cluster". The problem with is being used as a cluster is typical of the mind set of seeing a lot of nice, shiny new computers and saying "oh wouldn't that make a great linux cluster". The systems are too spaced out and not a high availability system. This would prevent a good run of something like the LINPACK benchmark or other linear algebra packages. The issue could be if they developed something more along the lines of a distributed system like [EMAIL PROTECTED]/BOINC which usually only works for highly or embarrisingly parallel jobs. Personally, while I don't see it as much of a threat from that angle as from an invasion of privacy/stealing personal data, I certainly hope my notion that nothing happens is true.
Andy O'Hara Haverford College '09 > Send Beowulf mailing list submissions to > [email protected] > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:48:38 +0200 > From: Eugen Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [Beowulf] [tt] World's most powerful supercomputer goes > online > To: [email protected] > Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > ----- Forwarded message from Peter Gutmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ----- > > From: Peter Gutmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:23:57 +1200 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: World's most powerful supercomputer goes online > > This doesn't seem to have received much attention, but the world's most > powerful supercomputer entered operation recently. Comprising between 1 > and > 10 million CPUs (depending on whose estimates you believe), the Storm > botnet > easily outperforms the currently top-ranked system, BlueGene/L, with a > mere > 128K CPU cores. Using the figures from Valve's online survey, > http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html, for which the typical > machine > has a 2.3 - 3.3 GHz single core CPU with about 1GB of RAM, the Storm > cluster > has the equivalent of 1-10M (approximately) 2.8 GHz P4s with 1-10 > petabytes of > RAM (BlueGene/L has a paltry 32 terabytes). In fact this composite system > has > better hardware resources than what's listed at http://www.top500.org for > the > entire world's top 10 supercomputers: > > BlueGene/L: 128K CPUs, 32TB > Jaguar: 22K CPUs, 46TB > Red Storm: 26K CPUs, 40TB > BGW: 40K CPUs, 10TB > New York Blue: 37K CPUs, 18TB > ASC Purple: 12K CPUs, 49TB > eServer Blue Gene: ? > Abe: 10K CPUs, 10TB > MareNostrum: 10K CPUs, 20GB > HLRB-II: 10K CPUs, 39GB > > This may be the first time that a top 10 supercomputer has been controlled > not > by a government or megacorporation but by criminals. The question > remains, > now that they have the world's most powerful supercomputer system at their > disposal, what are they going to do with it? And I wonder what the > LINPACK > rating for Storm is? > > Peter. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > The Cryptography Mailing List > Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
