Donate: Idle Computer Capacity
This morning I joined both the search for scalable clean energy and the search for a cure for muscular dystrophy.
Through World Community Grid, I have joined a distributed computing network of over one million devices that help researchers crunch the data for projects that benefit humanity. Here's how it works. World Community Grid software uses my idle computer capacity—read: computational capacity I don't need when I use my computer or when my computer is on but not in use—to analyze data for various studies. When my capacity is combined with that of others in the network, the time required to complete the analysis is greatly reduced.
Through World Community Grid, I have joined a distributed computing network of over one million devices that help researchers crunch the data for projects that benefit humanity. Here's how it works. World Community Grid software uses my idle computer capacity—read: computational capacity I don't need when I use my computer or when my computer is on but not in use—to analyze data for various studies. When my capacity is combined with that of others in the network, the time required to complete the analysis is greatly reduced.
Imagine if they were all plugged in to World Community Grid--and not 20 years old...
Photo from Flickr by ariwriter.
Photo from Flickr by ariwriter.
Here are brief descriptions of the projects I am currently participating in:
The Clean Energy Project: "The scientists in the Aspuru-Guzik group at Harvard University are using the World Community Grid to discover materials for renewable energy technology. The main goal of the project is to calculate the electronic properties of tens of thousands of new materials and to determine which of these are the best candidates to make the next generation of affordable solar cells."
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2: "World Community Grid and researchers supported by Decrypthon, a partnership between AFM (French Muscular Dystrophy Association), CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, ENS Lyon, Université Paris XI, Bordeaux 1, Lille 1 and IBM are investigating protein-protein interactions for more than 2,200 proteins whose structures are known, with particular focus on those proteins that play a role in neuromuscular diseases. The database of information produced will help researchers design molecules to inhibit or enhance binding of particular macromolecules, hopefully leading to better treatments for muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases."
And what an innovation. The software, developed at Berkeley, allows me to unlock the value of my unused computer capacity. It has apparently been around for a while and has been used since 1999 to power the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence through the SETI@home program, but offers many other options for users through World Community Grid.
I hope you join me with a donation that doesn't even mean you have to give something away. I've created a team called "Think: Social Innovation" to track the contributions of readers. View the team page here and please join!
Thanks to the Idealist.org blog for letting me know about this great tool.
thresheld
June 12, 2009 1:12 PM
Hey Nick-
This sounds like a fantastic project! I'm not sure if you're aware, but the Playstation 3 comes with a built in program just like this, developed by Stanford. It's called Folding Home or Folding@Home, one of the two, and it does just what you've described- it uses the idle computing power to do calculations that would otherwise take much longer. I'm glad to see that they're not the only ones taking advantage of that system.
-Dan Worthman
Nicolas Takamine
June 12, 2009 2:19 PM
I was not aware, but what a great excuse to get a PS3!
For reference, here's a link to information about the Folding@home program: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PS3