The rise of distributed computing was at a time that CPUs didn’t really throttle down. CPUs in general were just a lot more power hungry. But if you had to leave the computer on for some reason and had spare CPU cycles, it made sense to contribute them to a distributed computing project - the power was being spent anyway and it seemed like a good cause. Today, modern CPU sip power and throttle down and you are actively driving power consumption by taxing the CPU. There is a much less favorable cost/benefit equation today, but in terms of the cost of the power consumed AND the climate cost of the power consumed.
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The rise of distributed computing was at a time that CPUs didn’t really throttle down. CPUs in general were just a lot more power hungry. But if you had to leave the computer on for some reason and had spare CPU cycles, it made sense to contribute them to a distributed computing project - the power was being spent anyway and it seemed like a good cause. Today, modern CPU sip power and throttle down and you are actively driving power consumption by taxing the CPU. There is a much less favorable cost/benefit equation today, but in terms of the cost of the power consumed AND the climate cost of the power consumed.