The Grid is Down
After seven years, Grid.org has shut down.
So, what’s that? Grid.org is like SETI@home, one of those “grid computing” projects that uses the spare cycles when your computer is idle to perform massive research projects. If you’ve seen any of my machines lately, it’s the screen saver that looks like it’s doing some sort of chemistry with molecules and stuff.
Unlike SETI, which grinds through telescope data, most of Grid.org’s projects have focused on human health, including an Oxford-based study of how various sets of molecules called ligands interact with key protein molecules in the development of cancer.
I’ve run data for the cancer research project on multiple machines for the past two and a half years, analyzing 4500 proteins and around a million ligands since 2004. In that time, I’ve donated five and a quarter years worth of CPU-hours and accumulated over a million “points”. I climbed to third on the “Where’s George” team of users in terms of CPU time, points, and results returned.
I’ve returned 1500 results from my ThinkPad at home, 1150 from my machine at my former job, 875 from my old personal Vaio, 550 more from my current work machine, 300 from a loaner machine from a former client’s client, and a few hundred from various other machines.
The good news is that grid computing is more widespread than ever before, and there’s no lack of meaningful philanthropic projects an individual can contribute to. Since cancer remains my biggest cause, I will probably move on to IBM’s World Community Grid’s Help Defeat Cancer project. One of several places to look for information about grid computing in general is EnterTheGrid.