I’m sure many of you have heard about distributed computing projects like Folding@home and SETI@home, which asks for people to donate some of their computers’ processing power to help accomplish tasks that would otherwise require the use of expensive supercomputers. A new company called CPUsage wants to become the commercial version of distributed computing – it will offer to take on high compute tasks and will pay people who lend their computer’s unused processing power.
But before you start hoarding computers and drooling at the prospect of earning money without doing anything, know that CPUsage will “only” pay you $10 (USD) a month for every four hours of daily work – or about $10 for 120 hours monthly – that your silicon slave does. I’m pretty sure that that’s not even enough to cover the cost of electricity that your computer will consume in that same time period.
Edit: CPUsage co-founder and CEO Jeff Martens corrected my assumption in his comment below, saying, “I’d like to address the electricity usage. In our analysis, the most power hungry Dell dekstop would consume about $7/month in electricity if the CPU was pinned at 100% utilization for the entire month…every minute of it (depends on your state’s electricity costs, of course). While it is unlikely that CPUsage would utilize your computer every minute of every day for an entire month, that same Dell desktop would earn you in the area of $75 in rewards. For $7 in electricity.” Learn more in this shaky-cam interview with Martens:
As Martens said in the video, the longer you lend them your computer’s power, the more money you’ll earn. Also, the more power you lend, the more money you’ll earn. But still, I don’t think people should expect to earn big money from being a CPUsage participant. Speaking of earnings, it’s not clear yet whether CPUsage will pay people with actual money or with gift cards.
Still, if you frequently use your computer anyway, then it would be nice to get the most out of it and earn a few bucks or items. Then again I’m no computer expert – who knows, there might be a way to game this system and earn lots of money from it. Check out the CPUsage website for more information.
[via The Next Web]
