Some time ago, some guys from Berkeley thought it could be a good idea to use the spare computational power in their university for processing radio signals and search for intelligent patterns. The SETI project was born, and the most colorfull screensaver in the world was soon seen on millions of idle workstations all over the world.

Since this first example of shared computing, many other important (or not so important) tasks have been distributed among millions of computers worldwide. Some of them have tried to demonstrate the weakness of common cryptographic techniques algorithms (MD5CRK, PrimeGrid, Seventeen or Bust), some have been used for medical uses, mainly focused on drug or protein research (D2OL, Screensaver Lifesaver, Find-a-drug) and some have been trying to discovery new objects in the space (Einstein@Home). A complete list can be obtained from here.

However, I’ve always found a problem on all these projects, a rather annoying requirement for any average user: he/she must keep his/her computer on! Although this doesn’t matter in big companies or universities, users tend to switch their PCs off when they are not using them. It’s something quite common, indeed!. It would be much easier if these projects could run on other user equipment, something that could be on for longer.

The solution has come with the new games consoles and their increased computational power. The use of the new PS3 for fighting Alzheimer or Parkinson has been the most promising new game in the market, supported by their own makers. “Sony worked with Stanford University’s Folding@home project to harness the PS3’s technology to help study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly.”. Maybe there some commercial purpose, or maybe with some other motivation but, at the end, it’s a good thing…