Curing cancer can be added to the list of ways to procrastinate come September. U of T’s Help Conquer Cancer (HCC) project uses your computer’s spare processing cycles to understand the functions of cancer-fighting proteins.
The program works by asking volunteers to download a program that fetches data whenever their computer is turned on but not in use. Anytime a screen-saver would normally turn on, the program fetches data to calculate.
“A project’s data is divided into work units and sent out to WC Grid members’ computers,” explains Scientific Associate Chistian Cumbaa. “Each work unit takes a few seconds to download […] once complete, it is uploaded from the members’ computers back to the WC Grid server.”
HCC is part of the World Community Grid, a distributed-computing network funded by IBM that supports computer-intensive research projects. The WCG estimates that computer owners typically only use 10 to 15 per cent of their computer’s power.
The collective computing power of grid computing far surpasses the ability of any supercomputer.
“The numbers describing the World Community Grid are crazy,” says Cumbaa. “There are about 520,000 members that contribute to the WC Grid, donating computer time from 1,580,000 computers”
Since HCC launched in November 2007 the program has screened over 12,000 proteins and generated over 115,000,000 images. In an average day the WC Grid calculates 288 CPU-years of data. This is the same amount of data a single computer running at full capacity would take 288 years to complete.
The ability of grid computing to fight disease is not a new concept. In 2003 scientists used the technology to uncover 45 potential genes to fight smallpox. Other grid computing projects currently underway relate to HIV and muscular dystrophy.
The WCG was founded in 2004 with the mission of becoming the largest computer grid in the world. HCC is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Research Chair Program, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and IBM.
To learn more about HCC and use your computer to fight cancer, visit www.worldcomputinggrid.org
