Distributed computing is a science which solves a large problem by giving small parts of the problem to many computers to solve and then combining the solutions for the parts into a solution for the problem. Recent distributed computing projects have been designed to use the computers of hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over the world, via the Internet, to look for extra-terrestrial radio signals, to look for prime numbers so large that they have more than ten million digits, and to find more effective drugs to fight cancer and the AIDS virus. These projects are so large, and require so much computing power to solve, that they would be impossible for any one computer or person to solve in a reasonable amount of time.
參考答案:分布式计算是解决大问题的科学，它把问题分成小份并分别给不同的计算机去解决，再把各个计算机解决的结果合并成这个问题的一个解决方案。通过互联网，近代分布式计算工程要用分布再世界各地的自愿者的电脑来解决像寻找外太空信号、寻找上亿位数的巨大的素数、寻找治疗癌症和艾滋病的更有效的药物。这些巨大的项目不是一台计算机或一个人在有限的时间里能解决的，它需要很大的计算能力来解决。
