The Supercomputer on Your Desktop

Imagine what it would be like to have access to the most powerful supercomputer ever built. Guess what? You do. No, it won't help you run Quake II at a higher frame rate, but it could win you a place in history. Distributed projects such as SETI@home and the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search are using the collective power of the world's home computers, combined with the Internet, to solve humanity's toughest math problems.

How does it work? Distributed computing takes advantage of the fact that you're not using all your PC's computing power all the time, and if you choose to, you can donate that extra processing muscle to some fascinating science projects. A good example is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home, or SETI@home, an organized search for mathematical patterns in the radio signals that come to Earth from outer space. The goal is to try to pick out possible alien communications from all the cosmic static -- yes, it's exactly like "Contact." To help with the project, you can download a chunk of data gathered by SETI's radio telescope, plus a client program that will analyze that data and send the results back to SETI. The program runs like a screen saver -- it works only when your computer is idle, and it displays a nifty 3-D graphical chart of its progress. MORE >>