Shoutbox

it's basically number crunching for the researchers on mass scale, the SONY PS3's have this technology built into them now too so when your console is idle it's CPU can be being used to the researchers gather data about whatever project is currently running.

they can easily compare the results then and see various stats; poor example: how many chromosomes are there in a strand of human DNA

Earlier projects were measuring what the content/genetic makeup of the various chromosomes for the human genome project were I think.

It does not demand anything from your computer and only uses idle resources, so if you for instance started up a modern game, it would only use whatever percentage of free CPU 'bandwidth' there was available, rather than a constant 33% CPU usage you know?

more info on all current projects can be found on the world community grid site, where you can also choose which projects to support