http://iEx.ec

The key idea of iExec is to build a Blockchain-based fully distributed cloud infrastructure (see the previous posts introducing the project here).

To this end, iEx.ec combines two technologies : Blockchain and Desktop Grid Computing. Blockchain allows to build decentralized market place for computing resources. The principle of Desktop Grid (aka Volunteer Computing) is to collect the computing resources underutilized on the Internet to execute very large parallel applications at the fraction of the cost of a traditional supercomputer. You may already know or even participate to several applications that follow this computing paradigm : SETI@Home, Folding@home, disributed.net.

But do you know that in the past decade, many middleware have been developped that implement this model: BOINC, Condor, Ourgrid, XtremWeb-HEP; to name a few of them ?

Indeed, Desktop Grid middleware have several desired features to build a fully Distributed Cloud:

resilience: if some nodes fail, the computation continues on other working nodes.

efficiency: applications get excellent performances even if computing nodes are highly heterogeneous.

ease of deployment: allows to use any nodes without specific configuration, even those located on the edge of the Internet.

Thus, contrary to what its name suggests, Desktop Grid is the perfect solution for assembling hybrid infrastructures, whose computing resources can range from classical HPC cluster, to the Cloud, and of course Internet PCs.