Parasitic computing

2005

We suggest a general paradigm of using large-scale distributed computation to solve difficult problems, but where humans can act as agents and provide candidate solutions. We are especially motivated by problem classes that appear to be difficult for computers to solve effectively, but are easier for humans; e.g., image analysis, speech recognition, and natural language processing. This paradigm already seems to be employed in several real-world scenarios, but we are unaware of any formal and unified attempt to study it. Nonetheless, this concept spawns interesting research questions in cryptography, algorithm design, human computer interfaces, and programming language / API design, among other fields. There are also interesting implications for Internet commerce and the B24b model. We describe this general research area at a high level and touch upon some preliminary work; a more extensive treatment can be found in [6].

2011

Abstract We consider Internet-based master-worker computations, where a master processor assigns, across the Internet, a computational task to a set of untrusted worker processors, and collects their responses; examples of such computations are the “@ home” projects such as SETI. Prior work dealing with Internet-based task computations has either considered only rational, or only malicious and altruistic workers.

2008

Abstract In this work, using a game-theoretic approach, cost-sensitive mechanisms that lead to reliable Internet-based computing are designed. In particular, we consider Internet-based master-worker computations, where a master processor assigns, across the Internet, a computational task to a set of potentially untrusted worker processors and collects their responses.

Computer Science Review, 2011

Distributed algorithm designers often assume that system processes execute the same predefined software. Alternatively, when they do not assume that, designers turn to noncooperative games and seek an outcome that corresponds to a rough consensus when no coordination is allowed. We argue that both assumptions are inapplicable in many real distributed systems, e.g., the Internet, and propose designing self-stabilizing and Byzantine fault-tolerant distributed game authorities. Once established, the game authority can secure the execution of any complete information game. As a result, we reduce costs that are due to the processes' freedom of choice. Namely, we reduce the price of malice. c

Proceedings of the 13th Euromicro …, 2005

the emergence of Internet and new kind of architecture, like peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, provides great hope for distributed computation. However, the combination of the world of systems and the world of networking cannot be done as a simple melting of the existing solutions of each side. For example, it is quite obvious that one cannot use synchronized algorithms for global computing over large area network. We propose here a non-exhaustive view of problems one could meet when he aims at building P2P architecture for global computing systems, which u s e asynchronous iterative algorithms. We also propose generic solutions for particular problems linked to both computing and networking sides. These problems involve the initialization of the computation (and its dual the conclusion), the task transparency over P2P network, and the routing in such n e t works. Finally a rst computational experiment is presented for an asynchronous auction algorithm applied to the solution of the shortest path problem.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1995

As computer networks grow and blanket the planet, they become a community of concurrent processes, which, in their interactions, strategies, and lack of perfect knowledge, become analogous to human market economies. Economics may thus offer new ways of designing and understanding the behavior of distributed computer systems.

Cluster Computing, 2005. IEEE …, 2005

Volunteer distributed computations utilize spare processor cycles of personal computers that are connected to the Internet. The related computation integrity concerns are commonly addressed by assigning tasks redundantly. Aside from the additional computational costs, a significant disadvantage of redundancy is its vulnerability to colluding adversaries. This paper presents a tunable redundancybased task distribution strategy that increases resistance to collusion while significantly decreasing the associated computational costs. Specifically, our strategy guarantees a desired cheating detection probability regardless of the number of copies of a specific task controlled by the adversary. Though not the first distribution scheme with these properties, the proposed method improves upon existing strategies in that it requires fewer computational resources. More importantly, the strategy provides a practical lower bound for the number of redundantly assigned tasks required to achieve a given detection probability.

2011

Middlewares are software infrastructures used to cluster heterogeneous and geographically distributed computational resources so as to exploit them as computing systems able to run large-scale applications. Although their main aim is to transform the internet into a sort of computational grid to which everyone can connect in order to execute distributed applications, a number of problems have still to be solved in order to make middlewares actually effective in such a context. For instance, exploiting computational resources available within 'departmental' organisations can be still considered a difficult task, since such resources are usually represented by computing nodes which belong to non-routable, private networks and are connected to the internet through publicly addressable IP front-end nodes. This paper presents a Java middleware that can support the execution of large-scale applications over heterogeneous multidomain, non-routable networks. In fact, the middleware can be also exploited to relieve programmers of the classic burden tied to the deployment of PVM run-time libraries and program executables among computational resources belonging to distinct network administrative domains. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Frattolillo, F. and Landolfi, F. (2011) 'Parallel and distributed computing on multidomain non-routable networks', Int.

2011

Abstract We initiate the study of secure multi-party computation (MPC) in a server-aided setting, where the parties have access to a single server that (1) does not have any input to the computation;(2) does not receive any output from the computation; but (3) has a vast (but bounded) amount of computational resources. In this setting, we are concerned with designing protocols that minimize the computation of the parties at the expense of the server.