IPFS Support Added to Computes.io

Have you heard of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) hypermedia distribution protocol? The creators define it as follows:

IPFS is a peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. In some ways, IPFS is similar to the Web, but IPFS could be seen as a single BitTorrent swarm, exchanging objects within one Git repository. In other words, IPFS provides a high throughput content-addressed block storage model, with content-addressed hyperlinks. This forms a generalized Merkle DAG, a data structure upon which one can build versioned file systems, blockchains, and even a Permanent Web. IPFS combines a distributed hashtable, an incentivized block exchange, and a self-certifying namespace. IPFS has no single point of failure, and nodes do not need to trust each other.

Computes.io already supports sending in-string JavaScript operations and data to an unlimited number of computing cores globally. You can also already send HTTP(S) URLs of raw GitHub Gist and/or BitBucket etc hosted JavaScript files to computing cores. Now, you can send IPFS URLs to global (or interplanetary) computing cores!

Here’s an example of a computes.io kernel for computing operations via IPFS P2P hosted files:

Roll your own IPFS URL as follows:

echo “(function(data) { var result = data; return result; })” | ipfs add -q

Here’s a short video that demonstrates this IPFS + Computes.io supercomputing awesomeness in action:

Do you have any Raspberry Pis laying around? Turn these idle RPis into a beowulf mini-supercomputer using our pre-built SSD image (https://medium.com/computes-io/beowulf-1-powered-by-computes-io-supercomputer-cc227e85f17b#.x41nhub4u)