Universally Accessible Distributed Computing on Public, Heterogeneous Networks,
Applied to the Search for Mersenne Primes

Overview

Introduction

Approach

Model

Implementation

Results

Conclusions

Going Further

References

Acknowledgements

Appendix A: Active Jobs

Appendix B: Processing Resource Applet

Appendix C: Control Server Source Code

Appendix D: Processing Resource Source Code

Appendix E: Database Source Code

Going Further

First, there are some processing extensions possible in our applet. It could, for example, use multi-threading more extensively than it currently does. If the client were on a machine with multiple processors, the threading libraries in Java would be able to run separate tasks on each, without the user having to open additional instances of the applet in multiple browser windows.

Next, our system is not truly universal. For example, there are compatibility issues with the open source Java plug-ins included in some Linux distributions.

Due to the difficult nature of the tests, it uses an extremely high percentage of CPU, sometimes using a whole core. This poses a problem on non-multiprocessor systems.

Finally, if we had more time, we would gather more data, and further distribute the client. It may be interesting to insert it into actual web pages, and see what kinds of results we get.