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IBM Sponsors Humanitarian Grid Computing Project
BrianWCarver writes "Reuters reports that 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. Following the example of SETI@home, the project, dubbed 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. The first project to benefit will be Human Proteome Folding, an effort to identify the genetic structure of proteins that can cause diseases. The client is currently available for Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98."
The system is trying to find and locate a person who might be carrying a deadly virus. If anyone finds a "Conner, Sarah", please report it to this grid. We'd hate for her to be the cause of an entire planet's viral infestation.
But isn't the Stanford Folding project already doing part of this?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I bet they find a lot caused by viruses.
Well, you're our first patient then...quick everyone set their computers to research internal "warm and fuzzy" feelings...could take a lot of CPU cycles to crack this one...
That's already been done, by pr0n.
Where's distributed.net? Oh yeah, and some Linux clients might be nice.
This way to the egress...
Proteins do.
All my Windows boxes are 5+ year old crap with the cream of the crop being a PIII 600.
I have plenty of unused cycles on 4-way Sun boxes with gigs of spare RAM, though.
It would be nice if they released a client in portable C.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Well, not only do they not support any clients besides Windoze, but if you're operating on any reasonably secured LAN where the firewall doesn't allow you to willy-nilly connect over SSL ports (443) using proprietary protocols (gasp, imagine that), it isn't going to work.
Not really a great way to get off on the right foot with this effort. Make it impossible to use by the majority of those interested by precluding other OSes and folks on corporate networks without proxies.
Back to Folding@Home for me!
I've been doing SETI@home for a while now, and was pleased to see the announcement of this in the press. I was less pleased when I went to the web site, and found out that (as it says above) the only client was for Windows. Since I use only Linux these days, I guess that leaves me out.
I hope that with IBM's involvement, and stated committment to Linux, this will change soon. I sent them a note, using the "Contact Us" form on the web site, and would encourage others to do the same.
(Incidentally, I've been running SETI@home initially on Windows, now on Linux, using the command-line client in both cases. I find I get ~50% more work units/time with Linux, and less impact on interactive use of the machine.)
Suppose this effort discovers something. Just exactly who will own the patent?
Suppose it leads to the creation of a new revolutionary drug. Just exactly who will get the profits from the drug? (And who will have to travel to Canada to buy it?)
Additionally I think it's good that IBM too have an interest in this area, since 1) competition is always good and 2) it makes for more accurate results. With some luck we can have peta-byte based grid by 2007.
Is the cancer research they mention part of the United Devices effort or is this something different? The article confused me a bit on that count. It would be a shame to duplicate efforts.
Blaze a trail to the New World
What are they doing with the data they process? I don't see anything on the site that says. I can't say I'm very impressed if this project isn't using OSS and releasing their processed data into the public domain, especially since they're relying on volunteers for their processing.
I'd encourage all of you guys to support BOINC, an open source and multi-platform architecture instead.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
How about IBM put this (in a permanent manor) on their PC's and offer a discount for purchasers? Or on the machines they give away for free to charities/schools?
Seems like a transparent way to get their goals accomplished.
Whats wrong with Boinc? I thought it did exactly the same thing, only with more OS's supported, and the familiar SETI name behind it can't hurt either... Why try and compete?
If we were to use these millions of particularly unspecialized (in terms of computational ability) home PCs, wouldn't the cost be in pollution? You're consuming lots energy to crunch some numbers... you'd be plenty more efficient if you used some supercomputers. I think it's a good idea, but I wonder if this wouldn't cause more problems.
Here's the URL for BOINC: http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/
This is great and all, but I don't know if humanitarians are really the best processors to use in a grid computer.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
When you are finished with your tin-foil hat can I borrow it for a moment? I have to write a paper on the JFK assassination.
Some distributed computing projects appear benevolent, but the actual results remain the property of commercial organisations/universities and trusts and there's no guarantees that the results won't be used purely from a commercial and non-humanitarian point of view. I haven't looked into this new IBM project, but I'd like to advise people to always read the fine print in who own what when the project is completed.
In the past, I've investigated a couple of projects, that upon closer scrutiny look quite troubling. They often fail to address what the actual project is specifically, and who will profit from the results financially. Instead, their websites are full of feel good graphics, but the bucks stop at a pharmaceutical company's coffers when you look at the fine details, and there's no discussion of what the findings will be specifically used for, and by whom. In some cases, the whole issue of profit and ownership is quite smoothly whitewashed.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
The BOINC open-source distributed computing main page: http://boinc.berkeley.edu
From there you can see the five projects currently using the BOINC platform (developed by the SETI@Home team)
Now how is this really different from IBM's project?
A skeptic might think that IBM simply want to have a foot in the door of these big anarchic distributed projects.
Despite the stunning power available to this kind of distributed computing, it is less useful than it appears. In my research area (computational biology), the effort of parallelizing an algorithm and collating the results is seldom worth the dividend in speedup. Supercomputers generally run idle at most universities, for this very reason.
Folding@home was a nice success story, and there are further applications of those models, e.g. simulations of prion aggregation (mad cow disease, Alzheimer's, etc). But (IMO) this is the exception, rather than the rule. Anyone who thinks that parallelization is a quick & easy panacea to difficult computational problems in general is living in a dream world (and I say that as a proud owner of several Macs with parallelized RISC CPUs *and* go-faster stripes).
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard these cheap parallelization ideas floated (another example is building cheap clusters out of console hardware which I reckon I first heard in 1996!). And every other month someone offers me supercomputer time... the problem is in redesigning the algorithm to work in parallel. Certain algorithms, such as MCMC, are better suited to this treatment than others.
Of course, then you have to persuade a bunch of other scientists that Your Algorithm is the most deserving, which is a political issue (but hey, if it saves those CPUs from being used for the eminently futile task of looking for bug-eyed aliens, maybe it's a good thing...)
There won't be any idle CPU cycles :P
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Any distributed software needs to have the following requirements for me to install it on my system:
- open source
- free (as in beer)
- portable code, or multicode
- protected against buffer overflows etc. (managed code)
- signed updates of grid software, grid client software and working packages
- nice interface (including a good web server)
- only for use for non-profit organizations
- and I wan't to choose my projects
Bruce Perens called - He said, "Step off, bitch. I'm the biggest Open Source asshole on the 'net.".
What most people (especially americans with their cheap power) don't realize is that those "spare" cycles aren't free at all.
They cost watts, meaning money out of your pocket and increased pollution in the long term because the extra power drain will cause more coal/oil to be burned.
If you absolutely must pursure what amounts to a modern-day indulgence, do it with a cpu that delives good flops/watt performance, like a crusoe...
In the time it took me to create a Slashdot login to be able to post a message here, 4 other people have already joined the Grid 'team' for Slashdotters. Apparently they're tracking progress and awarding 'points' for tasks completed and our team is ranked 35th overall at last check.
For those interested, the team name is 'Slashdot Users' and more information can be found here
my geeklog
But this is run by United Devices, the same people who brought us the Cancer cure. Or did they? If you glance at the forums, you might notice one of the biggest gripes is that UD provides a minimal amount of feedback and status updates. They do little to nothing to promote the projects they have running, although they let you think there are some sort of prizes to be had by amassing the most points.
The truth is, I don't care whether they're in it for a profit or for posterity, but if someone's using my resources, I'd at least like to know how they're being used, and what effect, if any, it has had. The SETI project might be futile, but at least someone lets us know what's going on occasionally, which is far more than I can say for the UD projects thus far. For all I know, the cancer distributed computing project has been abandoned in favor of more promising avenues of research. Personally I'll stick with SETI.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
A couple weeks ago, HP had a press release announcing the "Global Grid Exchange":
http://www.globalgridexchange.com/
It's interesting to me that IBM would feel pressured to "play catch up" against HP (Should we expect one from Sun next month?) Obviously both companies have been percolating SOME sort of "Killer App" Grid Initiative for some time now. Perhaps the Grid Wars are finally starting to heat up!
(The name "World Community Grid" DOES sound like a blatant copy of "Global Grid Exchange", IMHO. C'mon guys! Be original!)
It's my understanding that because the Global Grid Exchange is bytecode-based (Java) they will support Linux as well as Windows (and eventually OS X.) Also, researchers will be able to write their OWN applications to run on the Grid, rather than limiting themselves to Proteome Folding.
Imagine that -- a researcher on a Windows box will be able to write a program which could be run on a Linux box (or, I'll go ahead and say it, a Beowolf Cluster) all without the programmer having to know -- OR CARE!
For that reason alone, IBM's offering seems like "Too Little, Too Late".