Harvesting Idle Windows CPU Cycles for Grid Computing

­ In this paper we demonstrate how to efficiently exploit the massive amount of idle CPU cycles from workstations and desktop PCs for Grid computing. The cycle harvesting is achieved by using sandbox technology and a generic guest operating system, specifically designed for the Grid resource. This relieves the resource owner from the complexity of installing and managing not only the resource software but also a large and diverse set of runtime environments that grid jobs may require. In addition, the sandbox provides a secure virtual environment, thus eliminating security issues for users and resource owners. Using this setup, resource owners can install a virtual machine of their own choice to provide a sandbox, and once the screen saver software has been downloaded, the resource is transparently and securely used as a Grid resource when the screen saver is activated.