No changes are made to the computing environments on individual machines. Rather, the software organizes the machines into clusters, called pools, or collections of clusters called flocks, that can exchange resources. From its perch in these computing networks, Condor hunts for idle workstations. When it spots one, it swoops in to run a job. When the owner resumes computing, Condor whisks the job to another machine.
Dead cycles are the hours computers sit idle.
Most computer usage is cyclic, peaking during typical work hours and falling off at night. Assuming the standard eight hour day, that leaves two-thirds of the day and weekends when many workstations are unused. Condor scavenges computer cycles during down times and makes them available for computing. Here's how it works. A researcher who needs computing cycles will submit a request to Condor's management software, which acts as a scheduler.