General Distributed Computing → Distributed Computing Projects & Teams @ DSLR

Welcome to another wonderful facet of DSL Reports: distributed computing. Just what is distributed computing?

[Webopedia] defines it as:

A type of computing in which different components and objects comprising an application can be located on different computers connected to a network.

[Whatis.com] defines it as:

In general, distributed computing is any computing that involves multiple computers remote from each other that each have a role in a computation problem or information processing.

Distributed computing is used to refer to any large collaboration in which many individual personal computer owners allow some of their computer's processing time to be put at the service of a large problem.
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The real value of DC is the way it uses your computer, in that it only uses idle time of your CPU. During the time it takes to read this, your computer will literally just sit and wait. This is true even if you are listening to music, had other files open, maybe even burning MP3s to CD. Probably 90% of your processing power is idle.
BUT - if you were participating in a DC project, that largely unused portion of your CPU cycles would be put to excellent use, and you wouldn't even notice it.
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So what exactly are the projects, or the large problems that DSL Reports focuses on? They are called:

Climate Prediction
Climateprediction.net is the largest experiment to try and produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century.
Click [here]

Ecology Fund
Centers on saving land around the world.
Click [here] for more information.

Distributed Folding
This project has been completed.

LifeMapper
This is a project to help discover knowledge of the life of the planet for the benefit of the Earth, its inhabitants and its environments. It will compute, map and provide knowledge of where Earth's species of plants and animals live, where Earth's species of plants and animals could potentially live, and where and how Earth's species of plants and animals could spread across different regions of the world.
Click [here] for more.

Folding@Home
Focuses on finding cures to many diseases like Diabetes and Cancer.
Click [here] for more details.

Genome@Home
Focuses on finding cures to many diseases like Diabetes and Cancer.
Click [here] for detailed information.

RC5-72
Works on breaking Government sanctioned encryption algorithms.
Click [here] for further details.

SETI@Home
Searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Click [here] for further reading.

United Devices/TSC
Team Discovery centers on finding cures for Cancer, but will soon be working on cures for childhood diseases. Click [here] for details.
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DSL Reports has teams for each of these distributed computing projects. And these teams have their own forums to gather and discuss issues relevant to their projects.

So can you tell me more about each of the projects and the teams? You bet. Just click the links in the project summaries above.

Welcome to Distributed Computing with DSL Reports.


[text was edited by moderator]