World Community Grid

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IBM, one of Questacon’s long term sponsors is a partner behind World Community Grid, a project aiming to create the world’s largest public computing grid in order to tackle some big problems. Questacon has established a team for you to join so that you can contribute to this great project (but more about that later)!

What is Grid Computing?

After downloading a small client application your computer becomes a part of the grid, downloading and analysing small portions of data when your computer is otherwise unoccupied. When the data is processed it is returned to the project’s central server and a new unprocessed chunk of data is downloaded.

By combining the processing power of more than 1 113 000 computers more than 195 000 processor-years (as at November 2008) have been accumulated!

What is the Project Analysing?

There are usually several projects underway:

Discovering Dengue Drugs

This project is aimed at discovering new drugs to control the Flaviviridae family of viruses. The virus’ atomic structure is known, so the grid is searching for small molecule protease inhibitors.

FightAIDS@Home Project

This project is trying to find small molecules that will prevent HIV from maturing, and thereby prevent people from developing AIDS and prolonging life. The shape of the molecules seems to be the most important factor in how they interact with the virus’ proteins. A large number of molecules will be examined by the grid. The ones that then seem to have the best chance of working will be tested in the laboratory.

Help Conquer Cancer

Researchers are trying to identify cancer cell proteins by improving the reuslts from X–ray crystallography. This should speed the identification of these proteins and lead to new medicines that will the disease.

Human Proteome Project

This project is examining the way that the proteins in our bodies fold and coil in three dimensions. Virtually everything that happens in our cells involves the interaction of proteins. Knowing proteins’ shapes will help researchers know how they work and how diseases can prevent them from working.

What's Next?

The project is calling for submissions for future projects that fit the following criteria: of benefit to humanity; non-profit; in the public domain and accelerated by grid computing. Possibilities might include earthquake early warning, pollution remediation or infectious disease control.

Join the Questacon team!

Questacon is the first World Community Grid team partner in Australia! Join our team and help the researchers to solve the problem. Questacon’s Webmaster is the Team Captain, and you can join our team by going to our page at the World Community Grid and clicking on the ‘join this team’ button. So far our team has contributed over five year’s worth of processor time to the project.

Is There a Downside?

Not really, but the downloaded data and uploaded results would be counted toward any monthly limit on your ISP account.

The client itself is about 5 MB, and each unit of work is about 0.5 MB. Your computer will only process data when you are not doing other more important things (like doing homework or playing games). Each unit of work will take between 10 and 20 hours of CPU processing, which depending on your usage patterns might take from a day to a week.

More Information

Visit World Community Grid to find out more about the project.