Saturday, July 14, 2012

Grid Computing Can Solve The Problem!

Did you know you can download a screensaver for your computer that will search for a cure for cancer, aids, malaria and a bunch of other deadly diseases whenever it’s running? You can!
 
Most college students have a computer these days, and a good portion your computers life is wasted on idle processes. Basically, your computer is sitting there and doing nothing. That idle CPU time could be doing something productive to benefit humanity.

I’ve been a computer geek for many years, and even I was surprised at what can be done with grid computing.

Grid computing projects are a great way to donate your computer’s idle CPU time to finding solutions to huge problems.

I’m going to tell you a little about what grid computing is, what you can do with it, and what has already been accomplished with past grid computing projects.

Grid computing, otherwise known as distributed computing, is where a bunch of independent users just like you can join their computers to giant network where they work together towards a common goal. These computers form a virtual super computer with a monstrous amount of resources. Each computer checks out a work packet like we would check out a book from a library. That computer does it’s analysis of that work packet during the computer’s idle time, then uploads the results and downloads a new work packet and it starts all over again. This concept of using your processor when your computer is idle has been termed “CPU scavenging”.


According to Wikipedia, Grid computing was developed in the early 90’s by Ian Foster of the University of Chicago and Carl Kesselman of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. Volunteer computing and CPU scavenging started to become popular in the late 90’s.

Now that you know a little about what grid computing is, let me tell you about what you can do with it.

There are all kinds of projects that you can participate in with grid computing. You can donate your CPU time to projects that are searching for cures to today’s deadly diseases. There are projects to search the skies for extra-terrestrials, finding better ways to produce clean energy, and even reverse engineering the human brain for the development of artificial intelligence.

The truth is, there a hundreds of projects out there that you can participate in if you want. The biggest list of projects I’ve found so far is on distributedcomputing.info. If you Google “grid computing projects”, it returns over 2 million results. So, if you want to help a cause, chances are there is a grid computing project out there that you can participate in.

The work you can do with it is great, but I want to show you some things that have already been accomplished with grid computing.
 
It’s very difficult to find out exactly how much time has been volunteered to grid computing projects because there are so many independent projects out there. The grid computing network that I use the most is World Community Grid. I’ve been working their projects since 2006. According to their site, they have close to 600,000 members who have loaded their client on over 2 million devices. These devices have contributed almost 600,000 years of run time to their projects.

Past projects have solved some of life’s big mysteries including identifying possible drugs to fight anthrax. They solved a bunch of complex math problems, evolved robotics technologies, marked and classified craters on Mars for NASA, and improved chess playing programs. The lists go on and on.

As I’ve just shown you, grid computing projects are a great way to donate your computer’s idle CPU time to finding answers to today’s big questions. I have talked about what grid computing is, what you can do with it, and what has already been accomplished.

I hope everyone learned something new today about grid computing, and maybe some of you will even consider donating some of your computer’s resources to a cause that you believe in. Thanks
 

UPDATE:

Now you can use your Android Phone too!




References:
Braverman, A. (April, 2004).  Father of the Grid.  University of Chicago Magazine, 96.  April 1, 2012.  http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0404/features/index.shtml

Global Statistic.  World Community Grid.  April 1, 2012.  http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/stat/viewGlobal.do
Grid Computing.  Wikipedia.  April 1, 2012.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing

Pearson, K. (April 2, 2012).  Active Distributed Computing Projects.  DistributedComputing.info.  April 1, 2012.  http://www.distributedcomputing.info/projects.html

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