Two applications for two techniques

Having already introduced you to the technique that will be used for my project in one of my previous posts let me share with you some more things about the application.

The application will be used at outreach events and science festivals to demonstrate how a task farm shares work across many independent nodes. Users can join a compute “cluster” with their own smartphone by loading a web page and act as a node in a distributed task farm.

Mobile view of the worker page

The users will see how their phones contribute small pieces of work that will be joined together to create the final result on a large screen. The final result is a fractal image, constructed piece by piece from the worker devices.

At the beginning of the execution, the master chooses the parameters of the application. For example, the master can choose the algorithm that will be used (Mandelbrot Set or Julia set), the number of the iterations(how many times the equation will be calculated) or the size of every task(in pixels). Each task consists of the coordinates of a little square of the picture. By loading the web page of the application a  device can become part of the cluster and compute part of the fractal. Then the master collects the results and glues them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

The web page for the result visualization

Nevertheless, there are cases that this technique can’t be applied and the communication between the workers is necessary. An example of this case is the Traffic Model that is used to predict traffic flow and to look for effects such as congestion. Simulation in transportation is important because it can study models to help better plan, design and operate transportation systems. So my second application had to demonstrate this case.

The web page for the traffic visualization

The road is divided into a series of cells, either occupied or unoccupied. In each step, cars move forward if space ahead is empty. Every user can control a different part of the road so for the boundary cases the users send messages to their neighbors to find out if the cell is occupied or not. The user can see on his screen how the cars are moving on the part of the road that he controls and the messages that he sends to the neighbours. On the master user screen, the traffic of the whole road and all the messages are demonstrated step by step.