Processing Power with Amazon EC2

[Anonymous]

Hey People,

We are currently processing around 200,000 queried map objects (lines), as in, theming them. We upgraded my computer a few months back, and basically couldn't have themed all these lines on the old one. However, it still takes about a day and a half to get one themed layer (about half a day for each stage). We don't know how long we will need to do this kind of work but I was wondering if anyone knows anything about Amazon EC2, and whether we could use it to share the load. I like the "pay as you go" idea because we are not sure of how much we would need it. I do know that you can use Amazon EC2 for STORAGE. But can you actually connect to, and use 'processing power'. I think you can, but have know idea how it would work, would it ADD to your current system specs etc... I dunno. My current specs are:

Processor: Intel (R) Xeon(R) CPU W3565 @ 3.2GHz 3.19GHz

Installed Memory RAM:  12.0GB

Cheers

Sigurd

[NateMoore]

Distributed processing would be great, but I don't think any of the AutoCAD vertical products can do it yet (though Moldflow can and some of the producsts on the Entertinanment side, so there is hope!).  Currently, processing for Map can only be done by the machine on which it is installed.