---
title: Distributed computing projects
date: "2002-09-29T12:00:00Z"
categories:
  - links
wp_id: 1127
description: I examine the rise of commercial distributed computing markets where companies buy idle retail processor time. This model dis-aggregates computing power, enabling resource-intensive initiatives like the Internet Movie Project to be crowdsourced using spare capacity.
keywords: [distributed computing, idle cycles, bottomquark, internet movie project, computing markets, grid computing]
---

Bottomquark's [review of distributed computing projects](http://bottomquark.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=1). What's striking is that there are commercial distributed projects -- where companies pay for the use of your idle time. That's a powerful concept. Instead of buying computers from a vendor, or even computing time from a vendor, these projects are buying computing time **retail**.

The reason I guess this works is the dis-aggregation of computing time. When I buy a computer, I need its use for about 12 hours a day. But I'm paying for its availability 24 hours a day. Since I have that spare power, I can sell it as long as there's a liquid market for such power.

Shortly, there will be companies creating this market -- focusing on aggregating the retail computing power, and using them across several projects. (Google is already trying to do that through its [toolbar](http://toolbar.google.com/), and so is [Intel](http://www.intel.com/cure/).)

Further, projects that earler could not be executed for lack of computing resources, but generating sufficient interest across the world, can now be undertaken. Like [Internet Movie Project](http://www.imp.org/faq/), for instance. Because people who are interested in the project will pay for it through their spare computing time.