Personal Volunteer Computing

Abstract: We propose personal volunteer computing, a novel paradigm to encourage technical solutions that leverage personal devices, such as smartphones and laptops, for personal applications that require significant computations, such as animation rendering and image processing. The paradigm requires no investment in additional hardware, relying instead on devices that are already owned by users and their community, and favours simple tools that can be implemented part-time by a single developer. We show that samples of personal devices of today are competitive with a top-of-the-line laptop from two years ago. We also propose new directions to extend the paradigm.