World Community Grid, run by IBM dwarfs all of those academic grids. With 1.8 million connected PCs, its combined processing power can equal that of one of the five most powerful supercomputers in the world -- it generally floats between the top five and the top 10, depending on how many PCs are connected at any given time. With 300,000 more PCs, IBM estimates that the World Community Grid could be more powerful than the globe's top supercomputer.
IBM's grid helps select researchers solve some of the world's most challenging problems. There are currently eight active projects, including research into cures for AIDS, childhood cancers and muscular dystrophy, as well as investigations into clean water and solar cell technology solutions. Completed projects include one that developed advances in genome research and another that explored new methods of performing biopsies.
Dr. Stanley Watowich, of the University of Texas Medical Branch, is using the World Community Grid to research drugs to combat Dengue Fever. "Our laboratory can access a dedicated 128-processor computer-cluster for this project," he said. "In contrast, during this project, World Community Grid has provided the equivalent of a dedicated 12,000-processor computer cluster."
Watowich said the complex calculations entered into the World Community Grid are typically returned within 1 to 6 months. They then need to be combined with the results from several calculations, so final results for testing take between 18 and 24 months to complete.
"Without World Community Grid, these calculations would be extremely difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to complete unless we had one year of 24/7 access to the world's largest supercomputer, which is not possible for academic research," he said.
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