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Category: How Gamers Can Help Cure Cancer Grid computing is a proven aid to serious scientific research. In their next-generation game consoles, Microsoft and Sony should let gamers unleash it. Commentary by Jim Martz. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are pretty cool toys, but with a simple adjustment they could both become powerful tools for science, helping researchers trace evidence of extraterrestrial life and testing possible cures for cancer. What's missing? A distributed computing client for game consoles.
Distributed, or "grid," computing breaks down complex computing problems into small steps that can be solved in parallel by thousands or even millions of machines at once. It is basically the difference between hiring someone to label 1,000 envelopes for you and asking your friends to each label 100 when they get the chance. In this example, the hired person is the traditional mainframe crunching numbers, while your friends are personal computers all over the world that offer to crunch small packages of calculations when they're not busy. ...
Source: Wired News
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