Spare CPU Power - How Real Virus Buster Uses It

You can use your spare cpu power to help to tackle deadly diseases that had plagued mankind for a long time and as well as diseases that only recently had emerged.

At the time of writing, there are a few projects using grid computing to tackle well known deadly diseases such as AIDS, cancer, malaria, smallpox, Ebola and the latest disease to hit the headlines like SARS and avian flu.

In order to take part in any of the above grid computer projects, you will need to have a reasonable fast computer, e.g. a pentium4 and equipped with Internet access. A under utilized computer will be best as it has lots of spare cpu power. You will then need to install a small program. This program can be downloaded from the project websites.

Usually once installed, they will work as a screen saver or will be running in the background without affecting your usage of the computer. Anyway most likely your will install the program to a spare CPU, so likely you are not using it as the program runs.

When the program runs, it will then request a small packet of data over the Internet from the main project central computer or server. Also most of the programs are designed to work through proxy servers like those mainly used by companies.

The program will then uses your PC spare CPU power to process the data. They do this in the background or when during the screen saver phase. Anyhow you will not realize it when it is doing its job.

The good thing about these programs is they are designed in such a way that they only run when there are spare CPU powers or where the computer resources are not used. Should you used the computer and requires the CPU power, the program will then retreat and give priority to running your task. Thus in no way your computer performance will be affected.

Once the require task is completed, such as the task of analysis, the programs will send out the results back to the central computer and request for a new set of data to be analyzed. Should you are off line when the programs finished analyzing the data, they will wait till the next time the computer is connected to the Internet before they (the programs) send and receive new data.

So this is how real virus buster grid computing uses your spare or excess cpu power.