Divide and conquer.
The spare computing capacity that is scattered around millions of desktops throughout the world could soon be worth real money. A number of people have begun to consider why the power of distributed computing could not be harnessed for commercial gain. The idea of farming out large computing tasks...
| Published in: | Economist Vol. 356; pp. 77 - 79 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Economist Newspaper Limited
July 29 2000
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | The spare computing capacity that is scattered around millions of desktops throughout the world could soon be worth real money. A number of people have begun to consider why the power of distributed computing could not be harnessed for commercial gain. The idea of farming out large computing tasks to thousands of individual computers could provide vast computing power on demand; and the individual PC owners who would become members of the computing collective could be paid for the use of their machines, which would probably otherwise be sitting idly. The underlying principle is that many hands make light work, and proponents of the idea hope that it will also lead to large profits. Various problems that would need to be overcome before this something-for-nothing idea could actually be made to work are outlined. |
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