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Topic: Is there a larger known networked computing project? - page 3. (Read 5783 times)

legendary
Activity: 1148
Merit: 1008
If you want to walk on water, get out of the boat
+1 to what Holliday said

And no, no other project has more computing power than bitcoin. Of course they try to hide our power by removing us from FLOPs statistics because "bitcoin does 0 FLOPs"  Cheesy
hero member
Activity: 952
Merit: 1009
Those numbers in the Wikipedia article are from February 2012, computing power has more than doubled since. By any reasonable measure Bitcoin is the largest distributed computing effort by far.

And the best thing is, it doesn't matter how much computing power you throw at bitcoin, the result (time between coins/transactions) is going to stay the same. For other projects, throwing more computer power at a problem results in faster solving of the problem. In bitcoin, thanks to adaptive difficulty, computing power is completely irrelevant, other than to decide who gets a block.

The biggest computing effort in human history: fueled entirely by greed.
donator
Activity: 980
Merit: 1000
Those numbers in the Wikipedia article are from February 2012, computing power has more than doubled since. By any reasonable measure Bitcoin is the largest distributed computing effort by far.
hero member
Activity: 614
Merit: 500
can a teraflop supercomputer be configured to crunch integer operations?

Sure, you can think of an integer as being a float with only zeroes behind the decimal point.
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1080
That's a pretty awesome idea actually!

Thanks.  However, it's technically difficult and I'm not even sure it is possible.  I think it is, but until someone actually implements it, nobody really knows.
legendary
Activity: 1106
Merit: 1016
090930
your proposal involves forking the blockchain for your cause.  There may be other causes more valuable to society over time (which will constantly change).  One thing we all agree has value is a device that can store our productive output in a unit to be transferred to others for their productive output.

No fork.  A brand new chain used as a secondary, alternate cryptocurrency.

That's a pretty awesome idea actually!
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1080
your proposal involves forking the blockchain for your cause.  There may be other causes more valuable to society over time (which will constantly change).  One thing we all agree has value is a device that can store our productive output in a unit to be transferred to others for their productive output.

No fork.  A brand new chain used as a secondary, alternate cryptocurrency.
full member
Activity: 157
Merit: 101
Uhhhh, the sha-256 computation secures the blockchain, kind of important

My proposal consists in doing both:  securing the block chain while folding molecules.

your proposal involves forking the blockchain for your cause.  There may be other causes more valuable to society over time (which will constantly change).  One thing we all agree has value is a device that can store our productive output in a unit to be transferred to others for their productive output.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002
can a teraflop supercomputer be configured to crunch integer operations?
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1080
Uhhhh, the sha-256 computation secures the blockchain, kind of important

My proposal consists in doing both:  securing the block chain while folding molecules.
legendary
Activity: 3374
Merit: 4738
diamond-handed zealot
The only reason for this is money though.  If any of the other programs offered money as a reward for computing at the rate bitcoin does, they'd be taking a large chunk out.  Makes you think of how greedy people are Wink haha

And it's also a pity.

Might be an opportunity for me to advert for my proposal about folding molecules instead of computing sha-256:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/least-action-principle-as-an-alternative-proof-of-work-system-108888

Uhhhh, the sha-256 computation secures the blockchain, kind of important
hero member
Activity: 560
Merit: 500
Ad astra.
There is a project out there called Internet that uses a lot of CPU.

I'd bet if you took the combined computing power of the entire internet it still wouldn't be anywhere close.... It doesn't take a lot of computing power to serve or view webpages.

It depends if you're talking about the computing power dedicated or the power actively used at any given time. The former is still much higher, but the latter, perhaps not.
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1080
The only reason for this is money though.  If any of the other programs offered money as a reward for computing at the rate bitcoin does, they'd be taking a large chunk out.  Makes you think of how greedy people are Wink haha

And it's also a pity.

Might be an opportunity for me to advert for my proposal about folding molecules instead of computing sha-256:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/least-action-principle-as-an-alternative-proof-of-work-system-108888
full member
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
no, bitcoin is far and away the most powerful computing effort humanity has ever produced, it dwarfs folding at home and government supercomputers...kind of makes you think...

The only reason for this is money though.  If any of the other programs offered money as a reward for computing at the rate bitcoin does, they'd be taking a large chunk out.  Makes you think of how greedy people are Wink haha
legendary
Activity: 3374
Merit: 4738
diamond-handed zealot
no, bitcoin is far and away the most powerful computing effort humanity has ever produced, it dwarfs folding at home and government supercomputers...kind of makes you think...
full member
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
There is a project out there called Internet that uses a lot of CPU.

I'd bet if you took the combined computing power of the entire internet it still wouldn't be anywhere close.... It doesn't take a lot of computing power to serve or view webpages.
legendary
Activity: 3598
Merit: 2386
Viva Ut Vivas
There is a project out there called Internet that uses a lot of CPU.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
No nothing even comes close (like within 20% of Bitcoin).   That also applies to centralized projects too (grid computing, super computers, cloud networks, etc).  Absolutely nothing is even in the same magnitude.  

There is some controversy though.  The Bitcoin network uses integer operations.  So technically the Teraflops (floating point ops) of the network is always 0.0 and always will be 0.0.  Given almost every measurement of computing power measuring floating point the Bitoin floating point estimate exists simply to allow some kind of comparison to other projects.  That being said there is no way to calculate the TFLOPS the Bitcoin network WOULD be capable of (if it ran floating point computations).  The estimate should be seen as a "best guess" only.  That being said Bitcoin is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo far ahead of anything else the crude estimate is likely "good enough".
full member
Activity: 157
Merit: 101
According to [1] we're on top of the world with combined cpu.

Can anyone site another network of combined cpu for a cause over 208,000 TeraFLOPS?

Keep on crunching!



[1] - short unofficial list of sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects
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