Your Computer Could Save the World While Idling
by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California 
on 12. 8.08
Photo via kevin1024
IBM and Harvard University would like to bum your computer for their science project that could revolutionize green energy. So, if you think it’d be neat to be one of the factors in changing the world, you can volunteer your computer. Read on for how, and more importantly, why.
By utilizing a million computers for calculations while they’re idling away, Harvard University and IBM think they’ll be able to more quickly come up with a new, cheap way to create solar power. The project uses IBM’s World Community Grid, and folks who have volunteered their computers are linked up so the organizations can run calculations on them.
With the help of idling computers located around the globe, the researchers feel they could take a project with a 22-year estimated completion date and polish it off in just 2 years. So what's the project? It's the Clean Energy Project:
The Clean Energy project uses computational chemistry and the willingness of people to help look for the best molecules possible for: organic photovoltaics to provide inexpensive solar cells, polymers for the membranes used in fuel cells for electricity generation, and how best to assemble the molecules to make those devices. By helping us search combinatorially among thousands of potential systems, World Community Grid volunteers are contributing to this effort..
In other words, they want to quickly figure out how to make way more efficient solar cells that are cheap enough to use in commercial products anyone can afford.
More than a million people are already linked in to IBM’s World Community Grid, which makes it as powerful at computing as some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
If you’re interested in being a volunteer, all it takes is downloading a bit of software (which includes a security package), and the calculations run as a screensaver.
So essentially, you’re volunteering your computer, as well as footing a fraction of the power bill, since your computer won’t be in power save mode during these calculations.
But this is one area where the power isn’t being wasted – it’s being used for a great environmental cause. So we’d thumbs up a bit of computer idling during the day if it means having radically more efficient solar cells marching out in just a few years. The grid is used for a whole lot of other very worthwhile humanitarian causes beyond clean tech, so it's a good way to feel ok about not turning your computer off during your lunch break.
Via Reuters
More on IBM:
IBM's iDataPlex is NASA's Supercomputer of Choice for Climate Simulations
IBM Gathering More Utilities for Smart Grid Deployment
IBM Uses Hot Water To Cool Supercomputers
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
Sadly (at least for me), the software is Windows-only. Mac and Linux users aren't allowed to help.
Awesome!
I do distributed computing projects, but only in winter (when my extra electricity usage doubles as heat). I normally do folding@home, but I really like this Clean Energy project
This is really cool, I also run folding@home on my ps3 and our desktop. I actually checked the power usage of our desktop with a power meter and it uses exactly the same amount of power whether the processor was running 100% or ~0%. This isn't true for every computer but not all computers(especially desktops) use processor scaling for power saving.
Linux, OS X and Windows are all supported by World Community Grid. The Clean Energy Project is already being beta tested on Linux and Mac platforms, and should be ready soon.
My PS3 does F@H and every computer I've had since GRID came out has been running it. It is incredible how many hundreds of years of calculations have been done on ruling out things not to try and things that are promising in the areas of cancer, aids and other research projects. I've never felt bad leaving my machine on knowing that its busy crunching numbers that will eventually save lives.
My PS3 does F@H and every computer I've had since GRID and its predecessor came out has been running it. It is incredible how many hundreds of years of calculations have been done on ruling out things not to try and things that are promising in the areas of cancer, aids and other research projects. I've never felt bad leaving my machine on knowing that its busy crunching numbers that will eventually save lives. I recommend to anyone, clean energy project or not to be running one of these applications.
Too bad on the lack of mac software. Guess I'll have to cure cancer instead of save the planet.
1. how do i know that they will use it for solar panels
2. whats my cut
3. fluid based heat collectors are better.
only kidding.
Great! I'd love to help!
For Mac users - That's why there's Boot Camp...
I think people are missing the real point. When your PC is idle, turn it off! Don't run a screensaver that will increase your carbon footprint trying to solve a problem for IBM and Harvard.
Those two large organisations should be responsible enough to handle the problem themselves, and responsibly offset their carbon footprint in the process. They are going to reap massive financial rewards when they do solve the problem.
Now, of course it is a totally different story if you power your PC with renewable energy!
Hold on one second. Will the data and research generated by this project be open to the scientific community at large or proprietary? I'm not seeing anything on the project pages about that- am I missing it?
If it has major corporate sponsorship, it seems quite possible that it will be proprietary. Maybe not, probably not, but it's an important question. If thousands of people are giving them free access to computing power, we should have some binding guarantee that the information will be open.
I've been running SETI@Home since my first day of college, and I've been running climateprediction.net through BOINC since 2004.
It's a shame this is Windows only, because it would be nice to contribute.
I'm a big fan of DC.
I currently have 13 cores spread over 5 machines running Rosetta@home.
On the page where it asks you to submit research projects it says:
"Research results must be made available to the global research community and will be made available on World Community Grid's web site."
So it looks like the outcome will not be proprietary.