World Community Grid – Help Change the World.
World Community Grid is a not-for-profit distributed computing project, sponsored by IBM, whose goal is to leverage volunteered computing power in the interest of public health. Some of the projects underway at the time of this writing are:
- Genome Comparison
- Help Defeat Cancer
- FightAIDS@Home
- Human Proteome Folding
You can learn more about these projects, and about World Community Grid in general, on the World Community Grid home page or for more detailed information visit the World Community Grid Overview.
Who Benefits?
The direct results of computational work done by World Community Grid are made available in the public domain. All projects under World Community Grid are administered by researchers who work for public or non-profit organizations.
Software
One of the important considerations when participating in a distributed computing project is which software to use. While the software the World Community Grid offers can be used, you may want to look into using the BOINC client which currently offers more user control (processing options, logging, etc.) and the ability to join other distributed computing projects. The BOINC client:
- Is open source software, distributed under the Lesser GNU Public License.
- Uses digital signatures and public-key encryption to help prevent the client software from being abused.
How to Join and Setup the BOINC Client.
This is a simple process:
- Create a World Community Grid account here and click the “select…” link to join the “TeraByte” team.If you forget to join the TeraByte team, you can join any time by following the instructions given here. By Joining the team, you’re helping TeraByte know that it’s making a difference.
- Once signed up via the link above, you’ll be taken to a page where you can download and install the BOINC agent. You can also download it directly from here. Instructions for installing BOINC can be found here for Windows, and here for Linux.During the installation of BOINC, you will be prompted to provide your World Community Grid account information. You can also enter this information after installing BOINC, by selecting the Attach to project item from the Tools menu in the BOINC Manager main window.
How to Stop Participating
You can stop participating at any time, either temporarily or permanently. To do so, exit the client software, and uninstall it, if desired.