Working example of browser based, HTTP driven map-reduce for a distributed word count. The jobs are assigned by the job-server and computation is done by the clients browser, after which the results are posted back (emit) to the server and the cycle repeats until the computation is done.
It’s a proof of concept with the goal of lowering the barrier to entry for any online user to contribute some of their spare CPU cycles to a distributed computation. After all, what could be easier than clicking a link?
(1) > ruby jobserver.rb -p 80 -e production (2) > open your browser and point it to the jobserver That's it.
For full details, take a look at: www.igvita.com/2009/03/03/collaborative-map-reduce-in-the-browser/
Ilya Grigorik <ilya@igvita.com> (Twitter: @igrigorik)