Well, actually I do a great many things with my computer and run the current team distributed application at the same time. Streaming audio, quake, web surfing, telnet sessions, image processing and rendering to name a few. There is no fight for cpu time because the app uses only idle time for it's business.

My processor was idle most of the time...

I have come to realize that my expensive computer was just sitting idle almost all of the time. Even when I was operating the console, the most I could do was to take out a few spikes.

Now everyone likes snappy screen response on their desktop display, but the processors are far more powerful than what we usually use them for. A computer is like a worm on a fishing hook - it just doesn't care. Your computer would just as soon be calculating all the time as not.

Not why use it, but what to use it for.

So once I realized that I had this huge resource that I had already paid dearly for - my fast desktop console - that was sitting doing nothing all day and night I decided to find something to use it for.

Mix in a few jiggers of internet...

All my life I have wanted to calculate large Prime numbers. So I went to my trusty browser to look for some factoring software in the nooks and crannies of mathamatical ftp servers.

What I found as usual is that I was not alone in my desire. There were projects. Others had thought of this a while ago and had worked out a system where many people could run the same application on their own computers and the effect would be that of possessing a humongous supercomputer.

...voila! Networked processors - a supercomputer!

It began to dawn on me. There is POWER in NUMBERS. If I can calculate some primes with my spare cpu time, fine. If I run a distributed application, I can increase the effect of my cpu many fold by working with others on a common project.

Then I realized that if such a group was a team or a club that could work as a group, support each other, compete with other teams in good-natured stat chart games, my little cpu would benefit from a third magnitude of synergy which would truly get the most out of my computer buck.

The team also helps mates keep up with the fields of parallel computing and distributed network applications and together we can decide where to budget our massive group useable idle time for maximum benefit to all.

Help decide where we should SUPERCOMPUTE

Join the team. Run the app. Find others.

Most importantly, help to decide where to apply our new power. There are a number of groups already vieing for your idle time whether to discover a new mathematical milestone, break a code challenge, or to help find other life out in space.

By bonding together as a CPUnion and moving as a group, we will really be able to offer substantial help to any of the projects we choose to.

Best Regards,
gregor markowitz

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