One of the internet's greatest strengths is its ability to bring people together in pursuit of a common goal. Whether it's improving navigation through community map updates, sharing product reviews, contributing to open-source software, or helping answer questions online, millions of people make small contributions every day that collectively create something far greater than any individual could accomplish alone.
In 2006, journalist Jeff Howe popularized the term crowdsourcing to describe the phenomenon of large-scale collaboration. In his book, Jeff explored how the internet was enabling people from around the world to solve problems, create knowledge, and build software together in ways that would be impossible for people to accomplish alone.
Most people benefit from crowdsourcing every day. Wikipedia makes knowledge accessible, Linux powers countless servers, open-source software drives innovation, and customer reviews help millions of people make better purchasing decisions.
But as many researchers will tell you, crowdsourcing is useful for more than just online reviews.
Over the past couple of decades, scientific research has embraced the crowdsourcing approach through distributed computing. This is where volunteers donate unused computing power to tackle problems too large for any single computer. Projects such as SETI@home and Folding@home have harnessed this global network to advance research in astronomy, biology, and medicine.
Raspberry Pi and Distributed Computing
Thanks to advances in computing hardware, participation in distributed computing is no longer limited to desktop PCs. Single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi have opened the door for hobbyists and makers to contribute to scientific research from their own homes.
One example is Bill Thomson, a Vilros customer from the southern United States who is using a set of Raspberry Pi 5 systems to support the Folding@home project.
Folding@home uses the processing power of volunteer computers around the world to model how proteins fold inside the human body. These simulations help scientists better understand the molecular mechanisms behind diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, and viral infections, accelerating research that would otherwise require enormous computing resources.
Bill’s setup shows how accessible this kind of contribution can be. Instead of relying on a traditional desktop workstation, he set up some Raspberry Pi’s that run continuously and efficiently:
“My current hardware consists of five Raspberry Pi 5 systems. Three of them have NVMe boards and drives. The other two are microSD card based. All have CPU heatsinks/cooling fans. Three of them are in Geekworm metal enclosures, or more correctly, the bottom half of said enclosures. The tops of the enclosures were left off for better heat dissipation.”
And Bill isn’t the only one who’s doing this. There’s a team of contributors from around the world who are united under the Raspberry Pi banner, all using their boards to contribute to this research. In total, they have contributed over 18,000 Work Units to the project, with each Work Unit representing about 24 hours of computing time on a Raspberry Pi 5.
Having the opportunity to contribute to scientific research is an exciting prospect for Bill and other contributors to Folding@home. And, every so often, contributors receive news that their distributed computing has supported a breakthrough and discovery.
“Some project contributors have been at it more than 20 years. Being part of Folding@home brings me satisfaction that I might be helping science to cure disease.”
While each Raspberry Pi engaged in the project offers a relatively small amount of computing power, distributed computing demonstrates how thousands of small contributions can become something extraordinary. Together, volunteers around the world are helping researchers answer scientific questions that would otherwise require some of the world's largest supercomputers.