World Community Grid

“World Community Grid has enabled my lab at Scripps to engage in research projects that we would not have attempted in the absence of this powerful public computing grid. It has allowed us to complete complex work in six months that would have taken five years.”

“World Community Grid represents a new model for technology-led transformation. We’re providing research organizations, colleges and universities with a significant amount of computational power—essentially free access to a virtual supercomputer—along with a range of services to complete their humanitarian research. World Community Grid demonstrates the potential we have to transform society by combining the smart application of technology with the power of collaborative innovation among leaders from across government, business, universities and research institutions.”

“World Community Grid makes it possible to analyze in one day the number of specimens that would take approximately 130 years to complete using a traditional computer.”

“It would take us about 100 years using our own computing resources to make progress, but with access to one of the world’s largest virtual supercomputers, we estimate to complete this project in 2 years, and begin laboratory trials.”

“The world is experiencing three simultaneous revolutions: in molecular biology and genetics; in computational power and storage capacity; and in communications. The computational revolution allows scientists around the world to tackle almost unimaginably complex problems as a community, and in real-time.”

“Protein folding is a big problem: there are a large number of proteins and a lot of possible shapes/fold. In spite of the difficulty, it is an important problem, at the heart of deciphering genomes. The sheer amount of computer power needed to carry out this project makes the use of grid computing essential.”

“Making predictions about the climate requires an enormous amount of computational power because of all of the variables, such as temperature, wind, pressure, and humidity. In order to improve the models, we need to come up with better algorithms that will more closely match what is observed in a local area. By using World Community Grid, we have the computational power necessary to run the tests we need to improve our models.”

“Without World Community Grid, we would have to make inexact, simplifying assumptions that have proven to be obstacles to previous drug development efforts. World Community Grid enables us to perform comprehensive calculations that yield accurate biochemical results, and therefore give us the best chance to discover cures for these serious worldwide diseases.”

“… when in use, most PCs are idle for around 80% of the time. Rather than let that energy go to waste, World Community Grid uses it productively.”