OpenMacGrid is a new project developed to utilize the spare cycles of your Mac using a pre-installed app already on your Mac (10.4 +) called Xgrid.
Computer users have been devoting spare cycles to complex scientific and mathematical problems for quite some time. Windows users may be most familiar with donating spare cycles because they have been donating spare cycles for years to hackers who have zombied out their machines and turned them into bots.
Why is OpenMacGrid different than other projects? OpenMacGrid is “Open” to other researchers instead of just those working on single projects like Berkeley’s famous Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) or Stanford’s noble Protein Folding. OpenMacGrid allows researchers to access the spare cycle resource with their own scientific applications instead of one single application like the above examples.
By opening up the resource to researchers everywhere, spare cycles on your Mac could help more researchers who would have less of a chance of making a change unless they were connected with one of the larger projects.
This might be scary for some conscientious Mac users. You might not really know for which project your Mac cycles are being used. Are they being used to cure cancer, or are they being used to determine the best plan of attack for Republicans to retake the house?
Xgrid is one of the most powerful OS X apps that goes completely unused because most Mac users don’t have a network of Macs to utillize.
Donating cycles is no big deal because the apps run in the background and you really never notice the processes taking place. You can track the cycle donation effort with widgets but for the most part, you can just let your Mac help save the world quietly.
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