Distributed Computing Hits the Money Market

"Butler Group OpinionWire Journal", 1.7.2002

Whilst many people have heard of the project to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, SETI@home, which uses the power of many individuals' personal computers to process the enormous volumes of data collected from radio telescopes, a novel use of distributed computing has been developed by a German company; to carry out technical share analysis and provide forecasts for the charting and analysis of financial figures.

The MoneyBee® system has been developed out of a neural network project at the University of Heidelberg to aggregate the processing power of a large number of personal computers into the equivalent of a super-computer. A number of tasks, such as projecting an index or share price forwards, are shared out amongst the many users, with at least three computers carrying out the same calculations. Each user gets a new set of calculations every few days. Once a task is completed (which can take some elapsed time, running as a screen saver when the user is not actively using the computer) it is sent back for consolidation to a central data bank. Users that contribute processing power then have access to some of the forecasts that have been computed, free of charge, with daily forecasts and predictions for at least 300 different indices. There is also a charged-for premium service, with expert evaluations, watchlists, and a personal portfolio manager.

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