Cooperative computing
Edwin D. Reilly · Encyclopedia of Computer Science · 2003
Cooperative computing (collective computing, or farming) is a form of highly distributed computing done by several thousand or even, potentially, several million computers. The cooperators are the owners of the widely dispersed computers, principally PCs and workstations (q.v.), who voluntarily devote machine cycles that would otherwise be wasted to computations farmed out to them by some central authority in search of a particular objective. This sponsoring authority then harvests and combines the partial results.