Distributing computations

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

Hi and welcome back from vacations (for those who had any, like me)

One of my work duties involves writing and running large number-crunching
computations (taking for example 2-4 weeks when run on a single top-of-the-line
machine). Since as everywhere there is a lot of PC power that is unused, I
thought that having a platform for distributing and coordinating these
computations would help a lot. And it might be a good way to introduce Erlang to
the company.

I convinced my boss to let me give it a try, and now I am investigating the
options. The architecture that looks best right now is in the style of for
example "SETI at home", with a server sending/receiving data and updating the
local clients. Since the actual job is not suitable for Erlang (I tried) there
will be small C programs thet will do the actual work.

What I wonder is whether anyone could give me some pointers to any related work,
because I need to have something to compare with. Hopefully not all such
platforms are closed.

Thanks in advance,
Best regards,
Vlad