What do you get when you cross a peer-to-peer (p-to-p) network (mostly used for trading pirated music and pornography) with a highly redundant server cluster (mostly used for mission-critical applications in Fortune 500 companies)?
The answer: grid computing. Ever since Seti@Home burst onto the scene in 1997, pretty much everyone with a desktop PC at work or home has been aware of how unused computing cycles can be used for various distributed computing projects. Despite the continuing race between Intel and AMD to deliver faster, more capable CPUs, far more computing cycles are spent idling between requests than actually doing anything.
Today's local-area networks ...