Jim Martz makes a plea on Wired News - let gaming consoles join in grid computing initiatives like Seti@Home.
"Grid" computing breaks down complex computing problems into small steps that can be solved in parallel by thousands or even millions of machines at once... the tech community has always supported these efforts, but it's time distributed computing moved out into the rest of the world. Imagine the possibilities of millions of gaming consoles (Sony has sold more than 70 million PlayStation 2s) contributing to a community previously limited to thousands of capable processors.
It's a nice idea (Martz suggests layering it into the machine's firmware) but isn't there far more progress to be made by getting full-on computers to join these initiatives?
After all, nearly 180 million computers were sold last year alone. And, as I'm sure he'd agree: you can't argue with numbers.
