Importance

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Abstract

The present invention utilizes the otherwise unproductive minutes and hours when a networked client computer is not in use by a local human operator. The method and system described herein allow multiple partitioned computations to be queued for distribution to any number of client computers when the clients indicate their availability. Availability may be determined by the same criteria used to activate screen-saver programs, i.e., a predetermined time without any keyboard or mouse input. Application programs are designed to accept a common calling sequence. An application-independent master control program coordinates the distribution of computation segments, the combination of partial results, and the formatting of the final result. An application-independent client control program reports availability of client computers, downloads application program files, invokes the application to compute partial results for a range of computation segments, and uploads the partial results to the master computer. One class of distributed computation supported is finding the minimum or maximum value of a calculated target cell in a spreadsheet, based on a number of input cells taking values within a specified range.

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First Claim