Distributed Computing at home - is it possible?

[FrizzleFrazzle]

So this is something I've always wondered - the world is moving to thinner laptops, tablets etc. There's been less focus on performance for standard users (Not gamers/video production). What I wondered is can you give performance of one pc dynamically to others? In essence could you have a beefy server which then donates performance to devices with slower processors so they can be smaller in size but still have that incredible performance. This is basically a step further from LTT 7 gamers 1 cpu.

 

Thanks

[007agentHP]

yes

its very possible. i know the GPU side of things

THey have What are called Nvidia GRID gpus built for running VMs. a specific card os the Grid K1 which is a quad GPU card (all 4 based on GK 107, GTx 660 i believe) that can support 4 users with 

[FrizzleFrazzle]

Just now, 007agentHP said:

yes

its very possible. i know the GPU side of things

Obviously building a server style PC with heaps of performance is fairly easy - the bit I'm not quite sure about is the software side in terms of sharing performance.

[007agentHP]

2 minutes ago, FrizzleFrazzle said:

Obviously building a server style PC with heaps of performance is fairly easy - the bit I'm not quite sure about is the software side in terms of sharing performance.

look up nvidia grid

they have things like the grid k1 with 4 GPUS onboard for 4 users

the software side is dealt with VMs like VMware

[FrizzleFrazzle]

1 minute ago, 007agentHP said:

look up nvidia grid

they have thing slike the grid k1 with 4 GPUS onboard for 4 user.

the software side is dealt with VMs like VMware

With a vm the resources are fixed and run over the top of devices - I want to integrate this at a more fundamental level using consumer level hardware.

[Sauron]

Depends on what you'd use it for - if it's for games that's steam in home streaming, on a vfio vm if you need it for other things simultaneously. If you think you can use a program and have your laptop magically pull performance from the other computer in exactly the quantity it needs, that's a different story and I don't think it's possible at the moment.

[porina]

The nearest I can think of would be the thin client model. One powerful server, low power terminals to access it. All the heavy work is run on the server and the terminal is little more than a remote display and controls. Basically like game streaming, but for the desktop in general. Might not be so good for video or games where you still should use a streaming model. Don't know if there's a unified solution to this.

[FrizzleFrazzle]

Just now, porina said:

The nearest I can think of would be the thin client model. One powerful server, low power terminals to access it. All the heavy work is run on the server and the terminal is little more than a remote display and controls. Basically like game streaming, but for the desktop in general. Might not be so good for video or games where you still should use a streaming model. Don't know if there's a unified solution to this.

That's basically it - the thin client model. I've played with moonlight which is streaming for games but I am looking for streaming an entire desktop. 

[porina]

I'm not really familiar with this for a home usage scenario. The systems I've seen are business/large organisation ones, which are used to improve security since data isn't stored at the user. If I were to try doing something similar, for single user, I'd just remote desktop into the server. If multiple user, I'd probably just run a server with VMs on it and remote desktop into the VMs. As said, performance for video or gaming will probably suck. Not sure how sound will work in this situation also...