Apple Inc.
Peer-to-peer distributed computing system for heterogeneous device types

Abstract:

Described is a framework (or technique or method) and system for providing a distributed computing network including different types of devices. The framework allows peer devices to transmit "packages" of information (e.g. messages) throughout the network as conceptual units of a job or data. The framework allows portable code, which is used to perform one or more jobs, to be transportable between peer devices. A device may transmit portable code describing a computation to another device, and the receiving device may then compile the code into executable form that is compatible with the architecture of the particular device. The compiled code may execute functions to perform one or more computations to fulfill job requests as part of a distributed computing protocol.