It is supported by the Intel® Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program. As the program runs, it uses your computer to begin processing a small packet of data. Once processing is complete (about a day later), the program sends the results back to a server and requests a new packet of data. If you aren't online when the processing is done, your computer will wait to send and receive data packets until the next time you're connected to the Internet.

The research program operates in the background, so you shouldn't notice it's running during computer use. It's designed to run only when computing resources are unused. As soon as you run an application that needs computing power, the research program will back down, and your computing performance will not be noticeably affected.