CPUShare is a research project created by Andrea Arcangeli with the goal of connecting together the computers of the Internet in order to create a Low Cost P2P Virtual Supercomputer available to everybody to use in a matter of minutes, controlled by a market for the CPU resources that chooses the price of the CPU resources using the supply and demand law in real time.

CPUShare allows the home users to profit from the significant power of their hardware that otherwise would be wasted every day.

CPUShare is the first technology that can recycle CPU cycles over the Internet without requiring donations (in terms of electric energy and aging of the CPU) from the home users.

CPUShare might give a NTCO (Negative Total Cost of Ownership) to all the Operative Systems that supports it.

Thanks to the use of virtual machines and virtual ethernets, all pre-existing GRID software should be able to run unmodified on top of CPUShare. Furthermore the CPUShare virtual capacity can be used to dynamically and transparently extend the capcity of a pre-existing cluster.

Using the CPUCoins (the CPUCoins are a virtual credit, like in a video game), CPUShare can be optionally used as an energy accumulator, without requiring cash transactions to be useful. After accumulating CPUCoins, users can be allowed to share them with their friends, so that joint supercomputing projects can be developed too.

The CPUShare protocol is open and in turn it provides interoperability to all OS and architectures that can support virtualization of a x86-64 CPU.

All CPUShare development has to happen in the spare time until the project will be profitable, so CPUShare is proceeding quite slow but it's steady.

Click here to read the CPUShare Technical Overview.