AR surged by 70% in a single day. What is the newly launched parallel computing layer AO?

Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | Nan Zhi

Early this morning, Forward Research, the core organization of the Arweave ecosystem, held an online conference and officially launched the decentralized parallel computing layer AO based on the Arweave permanent storage network. Arweave founder Sam Williams introduced AO-related information in detail at the meeting and announced the opening of the test network.

As soon as the news came out, the Arweave token AR rose from 16 USDT to a maximum of 27.5 USDT, with a maximum increase of approximately 72%. *Odaily Planet Daily will explain the functions, features and differences of AO in this article. *

What is AO?

According to the official document definition, an AO computer is a single, unified computing environment (Single System Image, Single Image) hosted on a heterogeneous set of nodes in a distributed network. The AO computer is designed to provide an environment that allows any number of parallel processes to operate simultaneously, coordinated through an open messaging layer. The message passing mechanism connects independently running processes together, ultimately forming a “network”.

To simply understand, the bottom layer of AO computer still uses distributed technology, with decentralized scheduling units, computing nodes, information transfer nodes, etc., but it is a single operation object in terms of user perception.

AO Computer Characteristics

AO official documentation states that AO computers have high compatibility and can effectively run multiple processes in parallel, thereby achieving strong network performance. Its specific features include:

• Low restrictions: Unlike existing decentralized computing systems, AO does not limit the magnitude and form of the protocol (for example, Ethereum EIP-170 limits the upper limit of smart contract size to 24.576 kb), while also ensuring the reliability of the network itself. Verification to minimize trust;
• Compatibility: AO’s distributed and modular architecture allows existing smart contracts to be quickly embedded into the network and act as a process for receiving and sending messages;
• Modularity: Allow users to freely choose different virtual machines, ordering models, and message delivery security guarantees. Eventually all messages will be settled in a unified format through Arweave’s decentralized data layer. This modular nature creates a unified computing environment that can adapt to different workloads, and each process can run quickly and be settled efficiently.

The core goal of AO Computer is to achieve unlimited, trusted, parallel and unified computing services. Create a new basic environment for the design of DApp, which has the trustless characteristics of smart contracts and the advantages of traditional computing environments such as Amazon EC 2.

(Odaily Planet Daily Note: Amazon EC 2 is a service provided by AWS, providing variable capacity cloud computing services. EC 2 instances provide a variety of different computing capabilities and configuration options to meet different workloads and needs. )

Architecture brief analysis

The AO computer has a total of 5 components. Odaily simplifies its functions and operation logic as follows:

The basic unit of network computing of AO computer is “process”. The user’s interactive behavior will send “message” to the process, and then the process will run and calculate under a specific virtual machine, scheduler and allocated memory. The “messenger unit” is responsible for delivering messages and sending information to the “scheduling unit” for processing. The “computing unit” is responsible for calculating the output. Finally, the scheduling unit will upload the data to Arweave.

In addition, AO Computer launched the decentralized operating system AOS, which allows developers to launch command line processes that are not restricted by location when running, thereby achieving seamless user interaction on the network. The result is a unified, global computing platform that breaks through scalability limitations and is used by all participants.

Comparison with existing ecology

Differences from Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized computing network in which all users share memory and a single thread of execution. Ethereum was originally conceived to add Turing-complete computing to the blockchain, making Ethereum a “world computer.” The AO document states that the throughput of the Ethereum core network has not improved since 2015.

Ethereum does not plan to expand the network beyond single-threaded processing capabilities, but instead embarks on the path of Rollup expansion. This extension method focuses on supporting additional Rollup networks. There are 14 Rollups in the Ethereum ecosystem. Each of these 14 Rollups represents the calculation of a single thread (called “process” in AO) and can be executed in parallel.

AO proposes a new architecture that focuses on parallel execution rather than shared memory, supports any number of independent processes, and at the same time keeps the program decentralized and trustless.

Differences from the decentralized computing market

In traditional smart contract platforms such as Ethereum, the shared thread architecture limits the execution of small computing tasks, limits the scalability and efficiency of applications, and affects the possibility of intensive computing.

Some networks aim to facilitate large-scale computing in decentralized environments, such as Akash, which provides a decentralized container hosting service market that allows the execution of traditional, non-deterministic programs, but sacrifices the ability to create trustless services. Capabilities (i.e. smart contracts).

AO computer uses a holographic state mechanism to maintain traditional smart contract execution functions. AO does not attempt to reach consensus on the state of the computation itself, but focuses on ensuring that interaction logs are written and available on Arweave. The holographic state system then guarantees that the output is always the same. To simply understand, all nodes of the traditional blockchain need to reach a consensus and ensure that the data copies of the nodes are consistent through the consensus algorithm. AO first performs parallel calculations and outputs them to Arweave, and then the holographic state mechanism ensures consistent output results, thereby ensuring computing power and Smart contract support capabilities.

in conclusion

According to the documentation, the AO computer is a parallel world computer with strong expansion capabilities, operational capabilities, and compatibility. However, its internal test network has only been launched for a month. It remains to be seen whether the main network can be successfully launched in 2024 and whether the implementation performance can meet expectations.