Our perceptions about so many things are often wrong especially when it comes to technology. You would think that the computer you are looking at right know could not hold a candle to a super computer. A super computer is "super" after all. But in fact the processor in your computer is most likely faster than than the typical super computer processor and will do a single calculation faster than a super computer. What is so "super" about a super computer is it has hundreds or thousands of processor that are linked together on a super fast network. This enables them to crunch a massive amount of data at one time. This is the only way to something's where the results of previous calculations are immediately needed.
When time is not an issue but you still need to crunch a massive amount of data often distributed computing is an option. In some cases it is the only practical way a project could be completed. Simply distributed computer is dividing the data crunching up among separate computers. Those computers can be typical pc's spread around the world and linked together only by a ordinary Internet connection.
Some of the the distributed computing projects not only allow but depend on normal computers users as volunteers. The amount of computing power that these volunteers bring to bare is simple staggering. In fact a lot of the projects would be impossible to complete even if you had access to traditional super computing
You can follow the links below to find more information and lists of projects that you can get involved with. The is a wide varieties of projects. Maybe most famous is the SETI project searching for signs of extraterrestrial life in the sea of information collected by radio telescopes. If that is too far out for you there are several biology based projects working toward curing disease and answering other important medical questions, psychics, astronomy, cryptography, mathematics, economics, etc. There is most likely something you will be interested.
It is easy to donate all those unused cpu cycles. I have both my home computers and work computers running a project as a screen saver. The are pretty simple to install and once it is installed you really never have to do another thing if you wish. It is fun to check your stats that most of them keep. The visualization tend to be better than most stock screen savers and the pretty pictures in this case mean something. You can even join teams that pool there stats together and compare your processing might to others. It really is a no lose proposition and is pretty easy. You are never going to get back all those wasted cpu cycles back so why not donate them to aid humanity and have a little fun in the process. You may even find an alien civilization.
distributedcomputing.info A list of projects plus lots of other info.
Boinic Links to the popular Boinic projects.
If this technology interest you you could check out GRID@CERN. If you didn't know CERN is building this giant atom smasher the LHC. The last time the built a big smasher they need to share all the data they generated with scientists all over the world. They invented this thing you may have heard of called the World Wide Web. The 404 error you see when the page you looking is missing actually refers to room 404 at Cern where information request were once sent in the psychical world.
The LHC is going to produce way more data. 15 petabytes per year every year. Theat equals 15 million gigabytes or 7 times the storage of google or 1000 Libaries of Congress. Their Grid is basically a turns a bunch of computing center around the world into a massive super computer that share storage and processing power. It just might be the future.