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Millions of personal computers sit idly on desks and in homes worldwide, but what if they could be linked into a power grid to help address the world's most difficult health and societal problems? IBM asked this question and answered it in 2004 by creating the World Community Grid, a global humanitarian effort to harness unused computing power of individual and business computers and direct that power toward research designed to help unlock genetic codes that underlie diseases like AIDS and Alzheimer's or improve forecasting of natural disasters. Anyone can volunteer to donate the idle and unused time on a computer by dowloading the World Community Grid's free software and registering to participate.
Innovation
When IBM, along with representatives of the world's leading science, education and philanthropic organizations, launched the World Community Grid in November, 2004, their mission was to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Research showed that computer users only use 10-15% of the power on their computer leaving the rest for possible contribution to benefit society. Grid technology joins together many individual computers, creating a large system that far exceeds the power of a few supercomputers. It establishes a permanent, flexible infrastructure that provides researchers with a readily available pool of computational power to apply on a global scale to very large and complex problems for the benefit of humanity.
IBM donated the hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build this infrastructure and provides free hosting, maintenance and support. Here's how it works: volunteers download a free, safe and small software program onto their laptops or home computers. When idle, the PC will request data on a specific project from World Community Grid's server. It will then perform computations on this data, send the results back to the server, and ask the server for a new piece of work. Each computation performed by the computer provides scientists with critical information that accelerates the pace of research.
World Community Grid is addressing global humanitarian issues, such as new and existing infectious disease research for cures to HIV and AIDS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), malaria and others; genomic and disease research such as The Human Proteome Folding project which seeks to help identify the functions of the proteins that are coded by human genes; and natural disasters and hunger to help researchers and scientists with earthquake predictions, improving crop yields, and evaluating the supply of critical natural resources like water.
"We're taking IBM's innovative, on-demand grid technology - the same technology we share with customers - and applying it to humanitarian issues about which the world cares," said Stanley S. Litow, vice president of IBM Corporate Community Relations and president of the IBM International Foundation.
Impact
In the first month of the World Community Grid initiative, IBM reported more than 40,000 individuals had joined as members and, by March 2005, more than 91,000 devices were part of the grid. The computer cycle time they have donated now exceeds the processing power of a single computer running continuously for six millennia.
World Community Grid is currently looking for potential research projects, above and beyond those it is working on, that would benefit from grid technology. IBM is encouraging corporations, universities and assocations, as well as individuals, to join as partners and increased the power of the grid.
Inspiration
Stan Litow has been a part of IBM for 11 years and values all the technological advances and resources available for IBM to use to benefit society. He believes that business and world benefit go hand-in-hand.
"World Community Grid represents a new model for philanthropic giving," said Linda Sanford, IBM senior vice president, Enterprise On Demand Transformation, and chairperson of World Community Grid's Advisory Board. "World Community Grid demonstrates that government, business, and society can be the direct beneficiary of innovation if we are willing to rethink the way innovation and science both develop and prosper."
The World Inquiry editorial team edited this profile from the original submission of the interviewer or other source. The views expressed do not necessarily represent Case Western Reserve University, the Weatherhead School of Management or the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. More >>
