The next-generation consoles will have a huge amount of processing power and some people are already thinking it might be a good idea to come up with a distributed computing client for game consoles. There are many distributed computing projects, such as Folding@home which studies how proteins fold to help cure diseases such as cancer.
How might we end up with a distributed computing client in our gaming systems? Making the client available on disc is the least intrusive means, but it will only target a subset of gaming system owners who go out of their way to get it, along with bearing the cost to produce the discs. A better method of delivery to the consumer would be to build the client as an update to firmware. As an optional update, users would be presented with an offer to install an approved distributed client of their choice into their system anytime they performed a critical system update over the internet.
The full article about distributed computing can be found Wired
