The Ultimate Super Computer: Lots of ours

Research labs have an alternative to buying expensive super computers. They can allow thousands of volunteers to donate their computer's idle time. The combined power is profound. You, or better yet, your church, can allow computers to number-munch when idle, and search for cancer cures, or alien radio signals from space.

Years ago, I downloaded a simple program from Berkeley University: BOINC. Then, I slected some of the projects I wanted to donate time to. I chose mostly cacer research, but there ar eprojects for multiple sclerosis, dengue fever, and other ailments. SETI scans radio waves from space, looking for intelligent life (I'm not doing that one, presently.)

One can go into the settings of BOINC and stipulate whether or not you want your computer to number munch when it is running on battery power. You can stipulate whether or not you want to always number munch, or to only do it when your computer is idle. You can choose to devote one of 10 levels, in 10 percentage point increments, of your processor. Ten percent, twenty, on ipwards to 100%.

Over the years, I have devoted a grand total of 6 months to this. That's equivalent to 6 months of day and night, seven day a week, number munching for science. I hope you give BOINC a try!

Among the projects to choose from, I like "World Community Grid" which is an umbrella under which are several projects. "Human Proteome Folding" and "Help Conquer Cancer, pkus "Help Conquer Childhood Cancer, are my favorites.



http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

 

Here's one project I just heard about. It's similar to "Help Conquer Childhood Cancer" out of Japan, that I have devoted computer time to. Both look for new drug molecules.

http://docking.cis.udel.edu/