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From: U3364521@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Lou Cavallo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Amiga distributed processing. Is it possible?
Message-ID: <604@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
Date: 29 Mar 90 13:02:10 GMT
Organization: I.A.E.S.R., Melbourne University
Lines: 51

G'day,

Please note that this is essentially a repost of an article I posted to comp.
sys.amiga. I am reposting it to this newsgroup at the invitation of Valentin
Pepelea (sp?). For those who may not have read the original posting it is in-
cluded below (apologies for the bandwidth duplication).

From comp.sys.amiga,
article "Distributed processing on the Amiga. Is it possible?"

> I'm not asking for help this time {I usually seem to :-)}. I'd like to ask a
> (compound) question of the c.s.a readership. {Just for the kick of it! :-)}.
>
> Does/should the Amiga OS have the potential/capability in future for distri-
> buted processing?
>
> By this I'm suggesting more than just networking. For example, is Amiga's OS
> likely to be able to split up a job of work (say 3-D rendering of an object)
> to be run concurrently on multiple Amigas?
>
> Do I ask too much? Seriously that is.
>
> {I debated whether I should post this to comp.sys.amiga.technical. I hope to
> see some discussion of uses as well as the "fitness" of the existing AmigaOS
> for this purpose. I would like comments from "application types" who may not
> necessarily read that newsgroup.}
>
> {For Randell Jesup (sorry if I misspell your name). Is it in there? :-) ...}
>
> P.S:: Andy Tanenbaum has just announced a new book for Amoeba, a distributed
> systems OS which sounds quite exciting. This was a motivation for my asking.
>
> Please note that I am not myself knowledgeable of the OS technical details.

Some e-mail discussion (apologies, I won't repeat your names here) reminded me
of Amiga X however I'm not aware of how/whether one could control other Amigas
with X. Any details here somebody?

I've since considered the question of distributed processing within an AmigaOS
framework from a user perspective. I can't convince myself that enough home PC
users would want it. I think they'd rather other features and would consider
that this stuff would clutter up the OS (in code size and efficiency terms).

How should that be handled? Perhaps with library code (distributed.library ?)
so that it would be used only if asked for? {I'm guessing here folks, I don't
know the Amiga internals from the back of my hand. :-)}.

Any ideas? Any interest? :-)

yours truly,
Lou Cavallo.