What is SETI@home

Personal computer performance has increased dramatically over the past decade. So powerful are these machines that they complete most required tasks with time to spare. This spare time is spent in an idle loop, waiting for the next task. A number of organizations have launched public grid computing projects (i.e., using Internet-enabled personal computers) to capture these “lost” CPU cycles via specialized software that effectively aggregates the power of separate systems into a virtual computer. In many respects, computing grids are analogous to electrical power grids (Robb, 2002). Plugging in an electrical power-consuming device taps into the unused capacity of an entire system of power stations and not necessarily the one closest generation station. In computing grids, the individual computers make up a “grid” of processing power stations and the PC owners the associated virtual community.