When you hear supercomputer you think of a huge room filled with millions of dollars worth of high tech equipment. Today, that type of situation and power from distributed computing is also known as folding. With folding, you do not need one giant local supercomputer; instead software can take wasted computer power and put it towards a greater use.
When you install folding software, it might act as a screen saver and take raw computer power and through algorithms transfer that data into something useful. When many computer users take apart in this cause, it can combine a power greater than any supercomputer on the Earth.
Example of distributed computing:
Seti@Home
The SETI Institute is a nonprofit corporation is one of many companies to take advantage of user submitted distributing computer. “The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.” (www.Seti.org)
