December 9, 2004 | Read Time: 1 minute
The World Community Grid, a new project started by the IBM Corporation, in Armonk, N.Y., aims to solve big social problems using relatively small amounts of donated computer power from millions of users.
Through the project, computer users can donate their machines’ unused processing power for scientific research to benefit society. The project then takes large research problems and divides them into much smaller tasks that the individual computers can process. Using the Internet, it assigns and distributes the tasks to personal computers that process the assignments.
The project grew out of the company’s work in the Smallpox Research Grid in 2003. Two million computer users donated their machines’ processing power for the effort, and in less than six months, scientists leading the study were able to identify 44 potential treatments for smallpox. Without the grid, the work would have taken more than a year to complete, according to IBM.
World Community Grid’s first research effort is the Human Proteome Folding Project, a study sponsored by the Institute for Systems Biology, a charity in Seattle that is working to identify the proteins produced by human genes. With this information, scientists can understand how defects in proteins can cause diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, making it easier to find cures.
In the first week after the World Community Grid was announced, 25,000 people signed up. IBM anticipates that the project will provide computing power to six to eight projects a year in areas such as health, weather and earthquake prediction, the environment, and agricultural production.
To get there: Go to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org.
