The SETI@home people were first, but the idea is catching on: harness the computing power of the world’s home computers for some greater good. The latest example is the World Community Grid, which proposes to use all that excess computing power to study drug research, protein folding, and other complex problems. From a story on Yahoo:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – IBM and top scientific research organizations are joining forces in a humanitarian effort to tap the unused power of millions of computers and help solve complex social problems.
The World Community Grid will seek to tap the vast underutilized power of computers belonging to individuals and businesses worldwide and channel it into selected medical and environmental research programs.
Volunteers will be asked to download a program to their computers that runs when the machine is idle and reaches out to request data to contribute to research projects.
Organizers say the Grid can help unlock genetic codes that underlie diseases like AIDS (news – web sites) and HIV (news – web sites), Alzheimer’s or cancer, improve forecasting of natural disasters and aid studies to protect the world’s food and water supply.
Soon enough, donating your spare CPU cycles will be a deep decision that everyone will have to make, just like donating to charity. Don’t forget Einstein@Home!