A Simple Grid Computing Synchronization Solution 55
atari_kid writes "NewScientist.com is running a article about a simple solution to the synchronization problems involved in distributed computing. Gyorgy Korniss and his colleagues at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute proposed that each computer in a grid synchronize by occasionally checking with a randomly chosen computer in the network instead of centralizing the grid by having a global supervisor."
SImilar ideas to P2P (Score:4, Insightful)
The gist is, use a mathematical ploy to ensure that the ammount by which the system can degrade over time is compoensated by the simplest system possible.
This idea could perhaps be taken further...
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is more like the way that an entire auditorium full of people can clap in unison without a leader.
Each node just queries some other random node, and if it is behind that node, it advances a little, (say 10% of the difference,) and if it is ahead of the other node, it backs up a little. This way, by repeatedly seeing how the others are doing, each node tracks onto the average of the group. The goal isn't to be right, it is just to agree.
The 80s retro work (Score:1, Insightful)
Research facility by a couple of the people involved in the ethernet development. They we synchronizing Xerox's phone/address list throughout the world by random contact and update. While they are certainly people with a hammer (random control) hitting anything looking vaugely like a nail, the experiment was a great success. They had a strong mathematical analysis developed in the medical community: communicable disease propogation. The system was far more reliable and lower cost (in communications) than any attempt to track the connections and run data propogation that "knows" an even slightly out-of-date view of available network connections.
If you think random cannot work in practice, don't use ethernet. For that matter, don't use semiconductor technology at all.