In 1999, the Seti@Home project was launched to take advantage of the world’s idle PCs in the search for extraterrestrial life. It was one of the earliest examples of volunteer grid computing: tapping the collective processing power of many widely scattered computers that are not normally centrally controlled.
Today, the World Community Grid is applying that same model for research projects that benefit humanity. Its mission is to create the world’s largest public computing grid for discovering new clean energy technologies and other worthy scientific breakthroughs. WCG is making the technology available to public and not-for-profit organizations that might otherwise not do the research due to the high cost of a high-performance computing infrastructure.
It costs you nothing and couldn’t be easier to participate — a simple, one-click download is all that’s required to make your PC part of the grid. When you’re away from your PC, it will crunch data for a specific WCG project and send the results back to a central server. Each computation that your computer performs provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research. Check it out and get involved here.