Many companies and scientists have taken advantage of this raw supercomputing power. Pixar Studios used 117 Sun Workstations hooked up together to render the 3D animation frames in their movie, Toy Story (Pountain). With distributed computing, more advancements in science are possible. Scientists could quickly study seismic data patterns. Bioengineers could study the effects of protein folding. Chemists could even use it to design new synthetic drugs. In fact, many of the things done with parallel computers — a local form of distributed computing — can be applied to distributed computing. There are many more possibilities on the horizon.

Organizations with large projects to complete have attracted Internet users from across the world to donate their computer's time. SETI@Home — by far the most popular with users — analyzes data from a telescope, searching for potental signals from extraterrestrial life. RC5-64, a project from Distributed.net, is testing out 72 quadrillion keys to unlock a 64-bit encryption code. The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search sorts through numbers in the millions for a large prime number.

Because of the exploding popularity of distributed computing, some commercial start-ups have even based their entire business on it. By persuading Internet users to give their computer time, companies like Entropia, Inc. are able to rent out computer power to corporations. But why rely on distributed companies when you can purchase your own parallel computer?