Content about grid computing

Distributed computing is only useful for the sciences, when there are large amounts of data or large amounts of computational power is required - right?

Think again. The humanities are overwhelmed with data as well, according to Sheila Anderson from King's College London, and also need to use grids to advance their field.

Researchers have developed a new way to visualize how medieval armies crossed countries to do battle. To expedite their simulations, grid computing is used to process the enormous amounts of data involved.

The team from the University of Birmingham, UK, also combines archaeological and historical evidence with a computing technique called agent-based modelling to bring the past back to life. Find out why understanding medieval military logistics is relevant today.

 Cuba's scientists use a multi-layered approach to understand where clouds of pollution will spread.

An online data hub could be invaluable to researchers studying a new form of hadrontherapy.

Would you like side of grid with your meal? Now you can, at the French version of the Grid Cafe.

Commentators suggest that Wikipedia and other collaborative network-driven projects, such as the Linux computer operating system, could be an emerging socioeconomic paradigm no less radical and disruptive than the Industrial Revolution.

Wikipedia is meant to be a new way of doing things in a world of ubiquitous electronic information and social networks, one that may be changing the conduct of everything from scientific research to political campaigns.

Sociological commentary and predictions aside, however, do Wikipedia and other “crowd-sourced” efforts really function so differently? Purdue communications researcher Sorin Adam Matei and his team are testing the concept by analyzing Wikipedia articles and revisions produced between 2001 and 2008 – a computationally demanding task. They’re finding that Wikipedia may have more in common with an old-fashioned factory floor than we think.

In theory, the collaborative online encyclopedia’s entries are created, edited and maintained with little in the way of traditional, hierarchical organizational and leadership structures. The production of Wikipedia has been characterized as an emergent system, like an ant colony, resulting from collective actions of individual participants with the “wisdom of the crowd” yielding a viable outcome.

Wondering what a bag-of-tasks application, elasticity, or cloudbursts are? Read on to find out.

While many of our readers were focusing on preparing for SuperComputing 2010, the World Community Grid celebrated its sixth birthday.