The Frontier compute engine is an innovative, unobtrusive software application developed by Parabon Computation that transforms your computer's otherwise wasted processing power into useful computation. The Frontier compute engine is the power source behind the Frontier™ platform, the world's first general-purpose computing platform that enables scientists, researchers, and businesses to solve compute-intensive problems via the Internet and network-connected computers. Computations that once required impractical or unimaginable amounts of power such as exhaustive regression techniques, Monte Carlo simulation, and genetic sequence comparison can now be executed across the Internet using the Frontier platform.
The Windows version of the Frontier compute engine gives you the option of running the engine like a screen saver or as an icon in your system tray. When you choose the screen saver (or Active Display) option, the Frontier compute engine window appears whenever your computer is idle and processing tasks. Status indicators, such as the ones below, appear in the window's lower right corner to let you know what the Frontier compute engine is doing.
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Whenever the Frontier compute engine is working on a task, the monitor's light blinks. In addition, Parabon's logo in the upper right corner is animated. |
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When you are connected, this indicator blinks when the Frontier compute engine is retrieving tasks to process. |
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When you are connected, this indicator blinks when the Frontier compute engine is sending the results of processing back to the Frontier server. |
When you choose to run the Frontier compute engine as a tray icon, the icon changes its appearance to indicate the engine's status. In addition, you can choose to run the Frontier compute engine all the time with the Compute in Background option. Selecting this option means that the Frontier compute engine will process available tasks in the background—even while you are using your computer—instead of waiting until your machine is idle.
A client submits computational work called a job, which is broken down into smaller units called tasks, to the Frontier server.
Whenever you (the provider) connect to the Internet, the Frontier compute engine retrieves one or more tasks from the connect to the Internet, the Frontier compute engine retrieves one or more tasks from the Frontier server.
Depending on your settings, whenever your computer is on, the Frontier compute engine Depending on your settings, whenever your computer is on, the Frontier compute engine begins processing tasks either in the background or during idle time and periodically saves results.
The next time you connect, the Frontier compute engine sends task results back to the The next time you connect, the Frontier compute engine sends task results back to the Frontier server and retrieves more tasks to process. You don't have to stay connected for the Frontier compute engine to work, but the longer you stay connected, the more tasks the Frontier compute engine can retrieve for processing.
