Google Gears + appengine = client-side grid computing?

[Theodosius Macrobius]

We all know that there are CPU limits on the appengine -- but there is
lots of computer power out in the cloud. In particular, any machine
with Gears installed can run worker threads.

So here's the question: is it possible to build an appengine app that
implements a client-side compute grid? Can we do the equivalent of
SETI @home using the appengine to coordinate sign up? In particular
-- can we implement map-reduce on the client side, using the appengine
for compute node signup.

What would it take? What would the architecture look like? Discuss.

[Roberto Saccon]

Everything is possible, but I believe, what you ask / suggest does not
make sense. Gears is not optimized for that. Gears workers run
interpreted Javascript. How do you convince people to let run your app
(and what app ??) the whole day, with main purpose of keep running
Gears workers in the background ?

regards
--
Roberto Saccon
http://rsaccon.com


On Apr 22, 4:47 pm, Theodosius Macrobius <theodosiusena...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Brett Morgan]

I'll be honest, I have thought about using a GAE app as a clearing
house for interacting Flex apps to communicate through. Actionscript 3
targets a byte compiled JIT VM, so it's not horribly slow.

But, in all honesty, this really has buggerall to do with GAE. The
requirements for a client side computing grid are around the
socio-politics of interesting users in running a client side app that
sucks their desktop/laptop's cycles. As far as GAE is concerned, it's
just web requests.