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Commercial DC |
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There are some possible problems that many of these commercial companies may or may not have considered. For example, if a person had the choice between getting paid for his computer time or getting nothing, it's almost certain that he'd choose to get paid. For companies that may not have the means to pay their software users, it seems that the purpose of distributed computing has gone out the window. (Slashdot) Modern distributed computing began as an easy way for organizations who couldn't afford high-priced supercomputers to get the same power supercomputers have, but for no cost; it may become a situation in which only those with enough money can afford user participation. There's also the question of multiple projects. Distributed.net has shown that it's possible for more than one project to run on the same machine, albeit the cycles would be divided among the different projects. There are a myriad of projects in the works, but would it be better to have ten computers each doing one project or one computer doing ten projects? Additionally, as the number of distributed computing projects rises, the more thinly spread the current user base will be across these projects. Thus, the less computing power devoted to each project, the longer each project would take. This, too, defeats the purpose of distributed computing. Itıs also possible that commercialized distributed computing could become like any other market, with companies vying for the most computing power and competing with each other. A set price among each commercial project might have to be agreed upon; otherwise many people might use their computer for the project that pays $11 a month instead of the one that only pays $10. However, commercialized distributed computing could be advantageous as well. Many people who may not have heard of these computing projects or cared to try downloading the software may be intrigued by the concept of getting money for doing virtually nothing, and will sign up. With the estimated billions of computers that will be in the world and connected to the Internet in the next few years, there is a lot of potential for powerful computing. (Rheingold 184)
Whether or not companies with complex problems will utilize the upsurge of commercial distributed computing websites and pay for their services remains to be seen. So far, only non-profit projects seem to be ready on the websites. However, since distributed computing is still in its infancy, it is possible that in the future everyone with a computer will participate in one of many projects that will be available.
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