A distributed computing grid takes a big investment and a lot of upkeep. And all that is in addition to the work that has to be done to make the results from the grid useful. Most projects ( http://distributedcomputing.info/projects.html ) have to create and maintain a grid using funding from a single project supported by research grants.

It is a tough situation and this explains why there are so few distributed computer projects. IBM is funding the World Community Grid in hopes that this will attract useful projects that otherwise would not be done. The universities have many scientists capable of doing research in computational biology that might lead to great medical progress, but if they cannot even test their programs on a realistic range of data without a grant of tens of millions of dollars for computer time, then they will do all their research in other, cheaper areas.

We are donating millions of dollars of computer time to projects selected by the Advisory Board and the only real cost (to us as members) is the time we spend following the project (unless we install the grid agent and then ignore it, the way a lot of people probably do). Even so, running the grid is not really cheap. It takes a lot of work just keeping the work units going out and returning them to the research institute.

mycrofth