World Community Grid: Distributed Computing Network

Good afternoon, dear users!

Have you ever thought about how you can make your personal contribution to the fight against cancer, AIDS or malaria?

IBM provides Grid technology for global research projects!

World Community Grid

World Community Grid is a global community of PC users who provide unused time for their computing systems to implement global research initiatives (combating AIDS and cancer, modeling and predicting natural phenomena, etc.).
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Those. Grid computing is a technology that reduces the computational resources of thousands and millions of individual computers into a giant single “virtual” system with enormous computing power.

The global humanitarian project World Community Grid was launched by IBM in 2004 with the support of the largest research centers in the world. The IT resources of the World Community Grid make it possible to analyze in one day such amount of data that would take about 130 years to process on a regular computer.

To date, there are 604,494 users worldwide with 2,175,094 PCs. The total computation time is 661,296 years.



To participate in projects it is enough to register on the site and download a free program.

Computers running on Windows, Mac and Linux can be connected to the infrastructure of the World Community Grid.

After registration, the participant chooses the project for which he wants to provide his computer resources. Projects are selected by an independent Expert Council, which includes leading scientists from different countries.

Having joined the network, the user receives a separate computing task on his computer (the project is divided by IBM specialists into millions of subtasks). After completing the task, the PC sends the calculation results to the server and receives a new task. Calculations are performed only when the computer is not involved (thus participation in the project does not interfere with the performance of basic tasks). The results of the calculations sent to the server are automatically connected with the results of other tasks, and form the overall result.



Below is a description of several projects in which you can participate.

Computing for clean water

The goal of the project is to study the molecular mechanisms for the passage of water through carbon nanotubes, which can be an inexpensive and effective replacement for the “filling” of modern filters for water purification.

Worldwide, more than 1.2 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, and 2.6 billion do not have sewers in their homes. As a result of these problems, millions of people lose their lives every year. The problem is aggravated by the relative high cost of filtration of polluted water, especially for socially unprotected segments of the population. Desalination of seawater is an even less accessible thing, although it has the potential to solve a drinking water problem in many regions.

At the facilities of WCG, it is planned to conduct comprehensive molecular modeling of the dynamics of movement and interaction of water molecules with nanotubes.

Computer modeling will help, in particular, to clarify the question of the unusual behavior of water molecules when in contact with nanotubes, when water begins to behave like ice. Having dealt with this problem, it is possible to achieve minimal resistance of water molecules when passing through nanotubes and other nanoporous materials, and, thus, increase the rate of water purification.

Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together / Finding a Cure for Fever

The project aims to detect potential medicinal compounds that block the reproduction of viruses of the Flaviviridae family in humans. These include viruses that cause such dangerous diseases as dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile fever, hepatitis C, etc.

About 40% of the world's population live in regions where there is a high probability of being infected with one of these viruses. Unfortunately, effective drugs for the treatment of these diseases do not exist, and palliative therapy is too expensive and can only slightly reduce mortality rates among patients.

As part of the project Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together, scientists are betting on the search for inhibitors of the viral protease NS3.

In August 2009, the first phase of the project ended. The calculations were performed using AutoDock, a specialized molecular docking program developed by Dr. Olson and his collaborators from the Scripps Research Institute.

In the course of the calculations, about 3 million potentially effective small molecules were modeled for interaction with the NS3 protease, of which several thousand of the most promising were selected. But, unfortunately, 90-95% of the compounds were ineffective in the laboratory.

In the second phase of the project Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together, it is planned to screen out the false-positive compounds found in the first phase using another molecular docking program - CHARMM, developed by Martin Karplus and his staff at Harvard.

Help Conquer Cancer

The mission of the project is to improve the results of X-ray crystallography (X-ray Crystallography), which will help researchers understand how cancer is formed, how it develops, and how it can be influenced.

In order to significantly influence the understanding of cancer and its treatment, it is necessary not only to discover new therapeutic approaches aimed at the study of metastasis (the process of spreading cancer to other organs of the body), but also to find some markers or structural labels with which to conduct an early diagnosis.

During the study of many forms of cancer, researchers were able to make several discoveries, having a limited understanding of the proteins involved in the formation of cancer. But in order to better understand and find more effective methods of treatment, it is necessary to investigate all the proteins involved in the process, their structure and functions.

Using x-ray crystallography, researchers will be able to obtain more accurate data on the structure of these proteins. This should lead to a deeper understanding of the functions of the cancerous proteins, and will allow you to find potential cures for the deadly disease.

The project processes more than 105 million images.

Detailed information on all projects can be found on the World Community Grid website.

Global cooperation and partnership

IBM aims to expand the World Community Grid network by attracting new members from different countries.

In Russia at the moment there are 3 603 participants that involved 21 717 computers. The total computation time is 5,656 years.

In addition to new members, IBM is looking for research projects from Russia to provide grid technologies.

Preference is given to projects related to the study and protection of the environment. This may be modeling of natural phenomena, natural disasters, climate change, assessment of natural resources, protection and restoration of landscapes, etc. The criteria for project selection are the scientific significance, the global nature of the problem, and the ability to divide the task into many subtasks.

Researchers interested in using WCG resources to carry out their projects can get advice at info@ru.ibm.com. Applications for participation in the project are made on the World Community Grid website.

According to the most modest estimates, projects on average need 184 thousand years of CPU time, and if we take the maximum - 10-100 times more.

But no matter how many computational resources are needed in the end, one can say with confidence that such a task has not been set that the multimillion volunteer army of personal computer owners donating their gigabytes and kilowatts in the name of science could not do :)

Would you like to participate? Then connect to the World Community Grid to make the world a little better!