Let’s face it; we live in a wasteful society. Our SUVs burn a gallon of gasoline every 15 miles. We throw away more food than some nations grow, and the Fresh Kills landfill in New York can be seen from space. But that’s not all. Information, today a resource as precious as oil or gold, is wasted every day. Even in our information-hungry society, trillions-yes trillions-of opportunities to learn useful information are missed every day.
During the day, while people go to work or school, their home computers sit idle. At night, their work and school computers do the same. Computing power locked away when it could be used to cure cancer, unravel the building blocks of life or solve many other problems.
The key to unlocking this potent resource is a clever concept known as distributed computing. Distributed computing turns your home, school or work computer into part of a vast supercomputer connected by the Internet. When the computer sits idle, the distributed computing program utilizes any resources the other programs on the computer aren’t using.
Some distributed computing programs only run when the computer is not in use, often taking the form of a screensaver. Others run all the time, simply using excess resources without affecting any other running programs. Today’s computers are so powerful that for most applications-word processing, Internet surfing, video games-there are plenty of resources to spare.
The distributed computing programs are designed around the fact that they use only spare resources. The programs are usually quite small, taking up only tens of megabytes. Furthermore, they run at low priority, preventing them from using resources needed by other programs.
Distributed computing programs don’t use much bandwidth, either. They usually only connect to their home servers for just long enough to upload processed data and download new material to work with.
Distributed computing applications abound. Simply type “distributed computing” into your favorite search engine and you’ll find a multitude of good causes to devote your computer’s excess clock cycles.
Popular groups include the medical research-oriented Distributed Folding, Fight AIDS at Home and THINK Cure Cancer. Math lovers should try distributed.net’s Optimal Golomb Ruler Search or the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. The philosophically minded may be more interested in a group searching through radio-telescope to find evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Distributed computing is not simply a good idea, but a proven problem solving tool. It has already had considerable success in modeling protein folding to medically-useful accuracy. PiHex, which ended in September 2000, demonstrated distributed computing’s mathematical prowess by discerning pi’s quadrillionth bit.
For years, vexing problems such as cancer, AIDS and the search for other life in the universe presented great challenges to science. Today a vast, untapped resource of computing power lies at our fingertips to solve these problems. However, that power requires that everyone with a computer to pitch in a little.
A computer is a horrible thing to waste, so download a distributed computing program and help fight cancer, find out what is really in pi or search the universe for life.
Nathan Alday is a junior aerospace engineering major.