That's what I wanted to know. I think people actually leave their computers on longer for things like this. For those that have to leave them on, or those programs that run in the background while someone is using the computer, you are still producing more heat and consuming more power than if your processors are idling (NOP,NOP,NOP...)
Now if we could all get fiber to our houses, the people wouldn't have to build those huge beowulf boxes, they could use the internet as a high speed interconnect and use distributed computing for less parallel tasks.
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That's what I wanted to know. I think people actually leave their computers on longer for things like this. For those that have to leave them on, or those programs that run in the background while someone is using the computer, you are still producing more heat and consuming more power than if your processors are idling (NOP,NOP,NOP...) Now if we could all get fiber to our houses, the people wouldn't have to build those huge beowulf boxes, they could use the internet as a high speed interconnect and use distributed computing for less parallel tasks.