Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

Do you know that most of the time we do not fully utilize the CPU processing capacity? The wastage is further magnified if you are using a dual core or a quad core processor. Since you have turned your PC / laptop on, why not spend the untapped juice of your processor to contribute towards humanity?

Yeah, I can contribute but why grid computing? What is grid computing? I thought we have many supercomputers out there? OK, let me cut it short. Everything is about centralization and decentralization of cost, workload and benefit. When a supercomputer is being used, all costs incurred are bore by the lab that houses the supercomputer. If the supercomputer is down, then everything will be lost since it is the only thing we can depend on. However, if we distribute the workload to 1000 normal computers, each user bears a minor amount of cost (electricity bills particularly). And if one computer is down, the remaining active systems can easily reprocess the lost data. Imagine there are 1,000,000++ computers somewhere across the globe. That’s a cumulative processing power far greater than a few supercomputers. So what is the idea behind? It’s called economies of scale.

Now that you have understand the concept. What are the programs offered out there? Well, there are many out there but I would like to recommend Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) as it is the most common platform aka middleware to date for multiple ongoing projects which harness the power of grid computing. I have previously written a post about some projects that I have been participating. In order for you to understand and later decide which to join, I’ll just list out the projects and the respective functions as almost all of the project scope are beyond my immediate understanding. More information can be found on respective project websites.

ClimatePrediction.Net
Field: climate science and modelling
Function: future climate prediction

Cosmology@Home
Field: astrophysics
Function: search for the best model describing the universe

Einstein@Home
Field: astrophysics
Function: gravitational waves detection

LHC@Home
Field: particle physics
Function: particle accelerator developement 

Orbit@Home
Field: astrophysics
Function: near earth asteroid search and impact hazard monitoring

POEM@Home
Field: molecular biology
Function: protein folding process simulation

Project TANPAKU
Field: molecular biology
Function: protein 3D structure prediction

QMC@Home
Field: quantum chemistry
Functions: molecular energy and reactivity prediction

Rosetta@Home
Field: molecular biology
Function: protein 3D structure prediction

SETI@Home
Field: radio astronomy
Function: detection of extra terrestrial intelligence signal

SETI@Home AstroPulse Beta
Field: radio astronomy
Function: detection of primordial black holes, pulsars and extra terrestrial intelligence signal

World Community Grid
Field: multiple
Function: multiple computation of different scientific projects

And if you think doing all these will not do yourself anything good, how about things that pay you when you do it? Gomez Peer Zone is another distributed computing project used to measure real time performance of websites. This one pays you to online and process assigned workload. There is one condition, that is you must be active before you are eligible for the payment. The validation process is quite slow ranging from several weeks to several months. Nevertheless, once approved, you can start enjoy earning some cash. Click here if you wish to get this one.

Well, that’s all for now. Start now and serve the global scientific community as well as your own pocket if you participate in Gomez Peer. =)

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