CPUShare is a grid computing initiative that pays its participants for providing idle processing time. Unlike BOINC, the provider is selling his time rather than donating it. While there is no word on the actual revenue a seller could reasonably expect to earn, anyone considering this program should consider the cost of electricity for running the software before picturing profits.
It seems like this system is more aimed for buyers in that they can order CPU time without paying for a cluster. However, the buyer must port his code to CPUShare’s platform. Given the time and money required to use this system, a user may be better served by purchasing an accelerator and porting his software to that, especially since grid computing only works in scenarios where there is lots of computation and little need for synchronizing communication.
As a word of advice for sellers who are contemplating any shared computing program, please anticipate the wear-and-tear that can occur against the disk drive. One work around for this is the create a RAM disk.
