Excess CPUs - Some Ideas to use them

Most homes may have more than one computers and likely they are netowrked together. There is a chance that there is or are some cpus under utilized for example if the cpu is a server serving the other computers internet connection. Then there is an excess of cpu power under utilized.

This article contain a suggestion on 14 ways to use computer , you may pick up an idea or two how to use the excess cpu power into some usefull use. As can be seen from the list, you can use your computers from solving mathmatical equations to solving or finding a cure for AIDS. All these ideas work on the concept of GRID computing, where a large number of computers are linked up together over the internet and get to work as one giant unit. These can be as powerfull as the world's supercomputers.

Now super computers are not cheap and the idea of linking up thousand of computers is a cheap solution to organizations or users who have large amount of data to analyse. All that's is required for such a link up are volunteers willing to download programs onto their home computers and run the software to analyze small chunks of data. The results are then sent back to researchers to crunch further. Just take a look at the type of work that can be done today in the above article. I would say the list is rather impressive. Would this put an end to supercomputers...well personally, I don't think so.

The main reason, supercomputers will not go down the dinosaurs way is that some data to be analysed or simulation to be done could be confidential and of national security concerned. As such these datas will be crunched in private super computers. I am sure, the organization or governement would'nt feel comfortable with these sensitive data being distributed world wide.