An anonymous reader writes:
CPUShare is a research project created by Andrea Arcangeli with the goal of connecting together the computers of the Internet in order to create a general purpose Low Cost and World Wide Supercomputer available to everybody to use in a matter of minutes, controlled by a market for the CPU resources that chooses the price of the CPU resources using the supply and demand law in real time.
It allows the home users to profit from the significant power of their hardware that otherwise would be wasted every day, and is also the first technology that can recycle CPU cycles over the Internet without requiring donations (in terms of electric energy and aging of the CPU) from the home users.
CPUShare might give a NTCO (Negative Total Cost of Ownership) to all the Operative Systems that supports it.
Using the CPUCoins (the CPUCoins are a virtual credit, like in a video game), CPUShare can be optionally used as an energy accumulator, without requiring cash transactions to be useful. After accumulating CPUCoins, users can be allowed to share them with their friends, so that joint supercomputing projects can be developed too.
The CPUShare protocol is open and in turn it provides interoperability to all OS. Currently only x86, x86_64 and powerpc64 CPU resources can be sold with CPUShare, but all architectures can be allowed to join in the future.
CPUShare will contribute to the creation of Open Source Software that will run on top of the CPUShare system. Once a piece of software is ported on top of CPUShare it might cost the same price to run it for 24 hours on a single CPU or to run it for 1 hour on 24 CPUs.
Since all CPUShare development has to happen in the spare time in order to maintain overall profitability, CPUShare development is proceeding quite slow but it's steady.
