The World Community Grid is an IBM-sponsored computing grid that allows people to donate the use of their computer to scientific research.
Scientists whose projects are approved by World Community Grid staff produce tasks or “work units” that are distributed by the World Community Grid's servers to member or client computers. The client computers perform mathematical calculations and return the results to the servers, which report them to the scientists. The project uses BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) software, which is available for free download from the World Community Grid web site. World Community Grid software runs alongside the other applications on your computer, and you can limit the amount of CPU or RAM usage consumed by BOINC.
Projects
Existing research projects supported by the World Community Grid include:
- Help Fight Childhood Cancer – sponsored by scientists affiliated with Chiba University, Japan.
- The Clean Energy Project – sponsored by scientists affiliated with Harvard University.
- Nutritious Rice for the World – sponsored by scientists affiliated with the University of Washington.
- Help Conquer Cancer – sponsored by scientists affiliated with the University of Toronto University Health Network.
- Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together – sponsored by scientists affiliated with the University of Texas Medical Branch.
- Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 – sponsored by scientists affiliated with New York University.
- FightAIDS@Home – sponsored by scientists affiliated with the Scripps Research Institute.