Distributed Computing
Posted: April 15th, 2004 | Author: khosrow | No Comments »My computer is on for most of the time without being used. And with the waste of power that it is, it leaves me with two options.
I could turn my computer on and off constantly. Only keeping it on for when I use it, and switching off for the rest. But this means that when I go to sit behind it on a whim, I have to wait for it to boot up. That’s just abominable!
So, I’m left with the other option; doing something useful with it during the time it is not in use. I had heard of a project that is aiming to use such unused computing power to sift through millions of signals received from outer space. The aim of the project is the search for extra terrestrial intelligence : SETI@home.
But as we all know humans were put on earth by god and the question of other intelligence and their evolution is absurd. So, I focused on something more useful: Folding@home
This project makes use of idle computer time of the users to perform simulations of protein folding that will help in understanding diseases such as Alzheimer’s and BSE. So, what this means is that now instead of simply wasting energy, I waste energy for a good cause!