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Grid Computes 420 Years Worth of Data in 4 Months

Da Massive writes with a ComputerWorld article about a grid computing approach to the malaria disease. By running the problem across 5,000 computer for a total of four months, the WISDOM project analyzed some 80,000 drug compounds every hour. The search for new drug compounds is normally a time-intensive process, but the grid approach did the work of 420 years of computation in just 16 weeks. Individuals in over 25 countries participated. " All computers ran open source grid software, gLite, which allowed them to access central grid storage elements which were installed on Linux machines located in several countries worldwide. Besides being collected and saved in storage elements, data was also analyzed separately with meaningful results stored in a relational database. The database was installed on a separate Linux machine, to allow scientists to more easily analyze and select useful compounds." Are there any other 'big picture' problems out there you think would benefit from the grid approach?

2 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Excellent by Mullen · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's Friday night and they are too stoned to respond to that setup.

    --
    Linux O Muerte!
  2. Re:Malaria? by sumdumass · · Score: 0, Troll

    It isn't somewhat less then human. It is not seeing the need to rush and aid someone who lives near danger on purpose. Especialy when the most effective control has been taken off the market because of enviromental concerns.

    I mean, would you really think it is most benificial sending food to starving children living in an area incapable of supporting life (like s desert) over moving them to a place that could?