Volunteer computing
System where users donate computer resources to contribute to research / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project,[1] and sometimes in exchange for credit points.[2] The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop computer is sufficiently powerful to perform billions of operations a second, but for most users only between 10–15% of its capacity is used. Common tasks such as word processing or web browsing leave the computer mostly idle.
The practice of volunteer computing, which dates back to the mid-1990s, can potentially make substantial processing power available to researchers at minimal cost. Typically, a program running on a volunteer's computer periodically contacts a research application to request jobs and report results. A middleware system usually serves as an intermediary.[3]