Equivalent for "Crowd" in the context of machines
Solution 1:
You may want to consider cluster (used mostly in computing).
businessdictionary.com:
cluster
Group of independent servers (usually in close proximity to one another) interconnected through a dedicated network to work as one centralized data processing resource. Clusters are capable of performing multiple complex instructions by distributing workload across all connected servers. Clustering improves the system's availability to users, its aggregate performance, and overall tolerance to faults and component failures. A failed server is automatically shut down and its users are switched instantly to the other servers.
Wikipedia:
Computer cluster
A computer cluster consists of a set of loosely or tightly connected computers that work together so that, in many respects, they can be viewed as a single system.
Solution 2:
What jumped to my mind when I read your question was the example of the SETI@home project:
- SETI@home homepage
- Wikipedia link, which is possibly better to get an understanding of the project, as the webpage is much less busy!
Google's synopsis of the homepage (I couldn't find the text on the site itself...) calls it "Currently the largest distributed computing effort with over 3 million users."
So, potentially "distributed computing effort" is what you're looking for... though it's a bit of a mouthful.
Solution 3:
In 2000 Pande Lab launched Folding@Home.
Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing project for disease research that simulates protein folding, computational drug design, and other types of molecular dynamics. The project uses the idle processing resources of thousands of personal computers owned by volunteers who have installed the software on their systems. (Wikipedia)
The term they use is "distributed computing". While this term predates the term (or at least its popularity, I need to verify the former) crowdsourcing, and does not follow the same construction, I believe it well matches the process you describe.