Can you spare a cycle?

Your computer has a feature which, perhaps, no-one has told you about. This is a special, never-ending task that tells your computer to do… well, nothing actually. That’s right, it twiddles its digital thumbs in between the times of being busy with its other, useful tasks. This idle task runs on your computer to fill up your spare computing slots (cycles) when nothing useful can be done. Or can it? How would you like to donate your spare computing cycles to helping worthy causes? Welcome to the world of distributed computing which allows your computer to do something useful all the time.

Distributed computing uses the principle that many hands make light work. On the one hand is the massive but under-used computing power of millions of computers around the world connected by the shining pathways of the internet. On the other hand are research projects whose calculations are so immense that no single computer can handle them effectively alone. The cleverness of distributed computing lies in cutting large and complex problems into manageable mouthfuls and feeding these to a lot of computers. Combining the results of analysing the mouthfuls solves the larger problem without making a meal of it.

For example, one of the longest running distributed programmes is SETI@home. This searches the sky for evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. When you join the research programme, your computer receives chunks of data to analyse in its spare time. In effect, you are watching a little speck of the sky for tell-tale signs of life and you might just get lucky.

SETI@home is one among a broad array of distributed computing projects asking for donations of your spare computer power. These include a range of exciting projects from mapping the foundations of the galaxy to identifying incoming asteroids, finding a cure for AIDS and Ebola to studying diseases through the folding of proteins, and much more besides.

If you wish to support the research programme of your choice then I invite you to take a look at the active research projects. You will find links to these projects on my website at https://rlcomputersolutions.co.uk/dc

Helping with one of these programmes will not slow your computer. However, it will use more energy because you will run your computer near to its maximum processing capacity. Will this affect your battery life? Actually, no because the writers of the software have designed it to pause automatically while away from mains power.

Finally, among the millions of computers there are also many active mobile phones and tablets. While you are charging your mobile device, this too can join in to help your preferred research effort that could save your life one day. Or find stupendously large prime numbers if that’s your taste.