Heating your home with supercomputing
19 Mar 2015 21:39:44 UTC
Topic 198020
(moderation:
The idea to heat your home with computers that do useful work is hardly a new concept for many BOINC users in colder climate regions.
That this might actually be an economically viable concept is demonstrated by a concept by Quarnot Computing. The idea is to install computing nodes that look like radiators inside homes or offices. Because data is easier to transport than heat, this might make quite some sense http://www.qarnot-computing.com/technology.
BTW, one could easily figure (say) a Raspberry Pi using some home automation to throttle BOINC on and off depending on the heating required by the user.
HB
Heating your home with supercomputing
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That is really clever. Both technically and commercially. Nice word play on Sadi Carnot, a pioneer of thermodynamics.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Interesting idea... I wonder
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Interesting idea... I wonder when they will be accepting volunteers to "adopt" their server-radiators? Will they only be targeting people only in areas that are cool year-round, or will they aim for a distribution around the world to avoid a seasonal decline in their computational power?
I'd be happy to "adopt" some, especially since they advertise it as basically free heat. The few hosts I have dedicated to BOINC aren't sufficient for my heating needs in the winter, but they can be a little overbearing in the summer months.
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RE: Interesting idea... I
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I don't see the "basically free" part unless you need to run them as Servers anyway. I see the radiators as basically huge water cooling radiators with fans behind them, unless I am missing something. If what I think I am seeing is right this could be sold as aftermarket upgrades to existing pc's, replacing the case sides. It wouldn't have to be a perfect fit, just close enough so some fans should move the heat thru the radiator and into the room.
If this catches on people
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If this catches on people will demand less energy efficient CPUs and GPUs.
Both Intel and Nvidia/Amd will have to rethink their whole strategy. No more Maxwell and back to 5GHz Pentiums :)
We live in an apartment in a
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We live in an apartment in a housing estate and pay a monthly rent. The heating costs (central heating oil) are an integral part of the rent. The effective heating costs will be charged annually by unsing a key (rental space) and the difference to the already paid portion demanded or repaid. Our three PCs running around the clock for E@H crunching generate enough heat to keep the house temperature through the winter at a comfortable level. In summer the heat is a problem ... Our radiators of the central heating are switched off, only in the bathroom a little bit on. Since the homeowner refuses to install a sytem for individual heating bills, we pay twice for the home heating!
I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me [Danny Hillis, Long Now]
RE: I don't see the
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The idea of this company seems to be a bit different from what you describe. As a consumer, you would just provide floorspace and cooling (your rooms and the air in it) to a company that installs the radiators. Those radiators would happen to be HPC compute nodes, but you as a consumer would not have access to them. You would be reimbursed for electricity and data costs. So yes, from the consumer perspective it's like somebody pays for your heating. For the company that owns the nodes, it's like somebody gives you cooling (and rack-space, plus basic facility management like theft protection, insurance, fire alarms, ...) for free.
Still, somebody could do a Kickstarter to pursue an idea of an after-market upgrade for home PCs (PC-to-radiator kit) and integrate it with smart-home heating controls or put a thermostat-knob on it, but that's not what this company has in mind.
I see a real potential for this idea in, say, student housing complexes near a campus, to augment computing resources of bigger universities.
HB
RE: I see a real potential
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That's why I'm wondering about their plans for distribution of their machines; if you were to limit these nodes to a small geographical area for use on a university cluster, the on-demand computing power would fluctuate with the local weather, especially on a seasonal basis.
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RE: RE: I don't see the
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Hi HB,
The only problem with student accommodation is their proclivity to hack anything that can be used to d/l the latest movie/tv episode/porn/whatever:-)
Then comes the law enforcement brigade acting to stop said activity. easiest done by stopping the kit being installed in the 1st place...
Cheers,
Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T Shirt.
The idea is pretty good. And
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The idea is pretty good. And I'm sure there are no significant technical borders to the distribution scheme. A fast network is all that's needed. Law differences between countries may actually be bigger hurdles.
I have actually sent those guys a mail some time ago, asking if / how one could contribute by hosting some machines. Sadly I got no answer at all.
@Cliff: the machines have to use encryption anyway, as otherwise corporations wouldn't rent that computational power (which the entire business model is based upon). If a node goes offline Qarnot would probalby notice very quickly (as they have to continously balance heating needs and task distribution anyway). Hacking into such a ecosystem sounds like it requires significant criminal energy. I'm not saying it's not going to happen, but I'm sure it would require more than plugging a keyboard & network cable in.
MrS
Scanning for our furry friends since Jan 2002
RE: Hi HB, The only
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In addition to what's been writen already, I'm more optimistic about this: As those compute nodes would be used by the university, students would harm themselves (it might be their own compute jobs that take longer to finish) if they tamper with the devices. So there would be a strong incentive to keep the nodes running as they are intended to run. If anything, there would be a danger of the students overdoing the heating if it's completely free for them.
HB