I started thinking about Bitcoins tonight. Not only the popularity of it, but more of the way the coins are 'mined' or produced. They currently are 'mined' from GPUs or video card, harnessing their power to create a virtual coin, or at least a small portion of a coin. There are tons of different coins out there to be produced, but one thing remains the same throughout all of creation. They are using processor power to create them. This got me thinking of something similar some of you might remember, some may not. It was the craze of the 90's screensavers. Projects like SETI to look for extraterrestrial life, and others to break down genomes for cancer research. I always thought that these had another alternative reason behind them. I think they were an early test for mesh computing. Mesh computing is a collaboration between multiple computers to harness or combine their processing power to create one massive CPU. The limitation of modern processors, even though they are getting more and more cores is the amount of cores they can fit on a chip. Now imagine if a modern ship has 16 cores, it can do way more calculation that say a CPU that has 8 cores. Double the calculations. But what if you could harness thousands of these CPUs all at once? You would have a massive amount of cores and massive amount of processing power. Let's not even talk about the possibility of using cell phone CPUs as well. Now the first series of trials are over from the 90's and we are moving to modern times. Now the reason why most people liked to use those back in the days is you felt like you were helping out with a greater cause. Why that attracts a percentage of people, they needed to look on a larger scale. What do people really want? Or how could we get them to willingly make them want to use something? Money, yup that's right, let's let them get rich off of it, and surely they will flock to it. So what if Bitcoins, mining, and blockchains are really the modern era of mesh computing? What if that is what is really going on in the background? So what would need this kind of processing power? Some things come to my mind:
Encryption cracking? What would take multiple years with one CPU could be done in seconds with mesh CPUs.
Maybe it's used for the massive tracking of all cell phone locations around the globe all at once?
Maybe it's used for the massive real time surveillance system that is spanning the globe and recording at all times?
Maybe it will solve the Riemann hypothesis?
So many possibilities when you stop and think about it. You are no longer using a single core processor or a dual core CPU, no you are using a Centillion CPU core. Calculations are down in seconds that would normal take centuries. Is this really what is going on? Could something like this be using your CPU or GPU processing power as well speak for a government agency? Or is it just time for me to go to bed?
Encryption cracking? What would take multiple years with one CPU could be done in seconds with mesh CPUs.
Maybe it's used for the massive tracking of all cell phone locations around the globe all at once?
Maybe it's used for the massive real time surveillance system that is spanning the globe and recording at all times?
Maybe it will solve the Riemann hypothesis?
So many possibilities when you stop and think about it. You are no longer using a single core processor or a dual core CPU, no you are using a Centillion CPU core. Calculations are down in seconds that would normal take centuries. Is this really what is going on? Could something like this be using your CPU or GPU processing power as well speak for a government agency? Or is it just time for me to go to bed?