Innovative Bristol firm YellowDog, which believes it can create the world’s fastest super-computer by using spare computing power from PCs and laptops, is looking to raise £150,000 in crowdfunding.
The firm, based in the Engine Shed innovation hub, is already using the system to help animators who need extra processing capacity. 
It has netted just under 90% of the total through the Seedrs platform in less than a fortnight.
Launched by Gareth Williams and Simon Ponsford, YellowDog is developing an application that buys latent processing power from individuals’ laptops or PCs to sell on to businesses that need extra capacity for short periods, such as animation studios when they are render films.
Typically, a computer less than two years old would earn £5 a week if its spare capacity was harnessed for eight hours a day. While the payments may seem small, YellowDog believes there could be a huge demand from those who tend to have new, and so more powerful, computers, but only use them for a few hours a day, such as students.
Gareth Williams said: “We believe this has the potential to create the world’s fastest super-computer.
“There are 8.8m people in the UK between the ages 24 & 35 and there are 2.3m students in higher education – 89% of them with laptops. If we joined together all these laptops we would create the fastest supercomputer the world has ever seen, over four times the current fastest. That’s enough processing power to render a film like Toy Story in 1min 12 secs.”
YellowDog charges animation studios for the amount of computer power used to complete their render.
Click here to find out more about YellowDog’s Seedrs campaign.
