A few years ago I became aware of the SETI project. Based at the University of California at Berkeley, SETI - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence - analysed radio signals, looking for signs of extra-terrestrial life. But rather than using a huge supercomputer to do this analysis, it instead used thousands of ordinary computers around the world to do the computing.
All computers spend quite a lot of their time being ‘idle’ and SETI used this idle time to carry out its own calculations. Volunteer computer owners downloaded a small app onto their computer and it then downloaded some data, carried out calculations when it was idle, and uploaded the results back to Berkeley.
As soon as I heard about it, in 1999, I had to join in and help with this massive task. The app ran on my PC for several years, helping with the effort to find extra-terrestrials.
Sadly the SETI project is currently hibernated, awaiting more funding. But there are plenty of other volunteer computing projects. They include projects searching for cures for cancer, cures for COVID, as well as a host of projects covering astrophysics, mathematics, cryptography and meteorology.
I was considering this recently when wondering what I could do with a spare computer I had in the house. Rather than throw it in a cupboard, only to forget about it, I could set it up as a full-time ‘volunteer’ computer. If it was idle all the time, 100% of its computing power could be offered to these projects, not just a small percentage.
Now I just need to work out which ‘good causes’ I want to support. There are just so many of them…