FBI's Computer Network Solving Crimes Even When Employees Away in new Grid Computing Initiative
The power bills at the FBI will likely rise in the future. That's because the Bureau, as it has announced, has found a use for its many computers while its employees are out of the office. Scientists at the FBI's Operational Technology Division (OTD) have launched a new program, the Grid Computing initiative, conceived in 2004, which uses all Bureau computers which are "resting" to run calculations for criminal and terrorism investigations. Idle computers which are not being used are left on to run mathematical calculations while employees are out of the office or on vacation. The program utilizes the FBI's internal network, allowing it to harness the power of thousands of computers and processors at FBI Headquarters and field offices around the country to run calculations for a central server.
The technology, called grid computing, has been used by corporations and universities for years. Grid computing provides an alternative to large supercomputers. The system can solve problems which it would otherwise take years or decades to work through. The University of California at Berkeley used 5 million computers belonging to members of the public in 1999 to run a program to find extrterrestrial life. The computers which run the calculations for the FBI are classified as secret. The Bureau states that it has had several breaks in cases since launching the initiative.
