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IBM Sponsors Humanitarian Grid Computing Project

Posted by michael on Tue Nov 16, 2004 05:35 PM
from the many-stones-can-form-an-arch-singly-none-singly-none dept.
IBM Hardware Science
BrianWCarver writes "Reuters reports that IBM and top scientific research organizations are joining forces in a humanitarian effort to tap the unused power of millions of computers and help solve complex social problems. Following the example of SETI@home, the project, dubbed The World Community Grid, will seek to tap the vast underutilized power of computers belonging to individuals and businesses worldwide and channel it into selected medical and environmental research programs. The first project to benefit will be Human Proteome Folding, an effort to identify the genetic structure of proteins that can cause diseases. The client is currently available for Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98."
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  • The system is trying to find and locate a person who might be carrying a deadly virus. If anyone finds a "Conner, Sarah", please report it to this grid. We'd hate for her to be the cause of an entire planet's viral infestation.

  • Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NecroPuppy (222648) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:38PM (#10836393) Homepage
    But isn't the Stanford Folding project already doing part of this?

    • Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xeo 024 (755161) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:54PM (#10836553)
      That was the first thing that popped into my head, too.

      For those of you who don't know Stanford's project, called Folding@Home [berkeley.edu], uses computer cycles to observe and find out more about how proteins fold.

      Now how is this really different from IBM's project?

      From IBM's World Community Grid website [worldcommunitygrid.org]:

      "However, scientists still do not know the functions of a large fraction of human proteins. With an understanding of how each protein affects human health, scientists can develop new cures for human disease.

      Huge amounts of data exist that can identify the role of individual proteins, but it must be analyzed to be useful. This analysis could take years to complete on super computers. World Community Grid hopes to shrink this time to months. Human Proteome Proteins are long and disordered chains folded into globs. The number of shapes that proteins can fold into is enormous. Searching through all of the possible shapes to identify the correct function of an individual protein is a tremendous challenge.

      The Human Proteome Folding project will provide scientists with data that predicts the shape of a very large number of human proteins. These predictions will give scientists the clues they need to identify the biological functions of individual proteins within the human body. With an understanding of how each protein affects human health, scientists can develop new cures for human diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria."

      From Stanford's Folding@Home website:

      "What are proteins and why do they "fold"? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out their biochemical function, they remarkably assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease."

      "What does Folding@Home do? Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases. We use novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. This has allowed us to simulate folding for the first time, and to now direct our approach to examine folding related disease."

      They both sound like they're out to accomplish the same exact thing. I could not spot any real differences, anyone care to enlighten us?

      • Maybe they're folding them in different directions. :)

        Seriously, I don't think there is a difference in goal. The only difference there might be is in method. Differences in how to share data and process it should be negligable, but Folding@Home is hardly speedy. But, then, it's not a simple task.

        It would be good if IBM and Stanford worked out a way to link their databases, so they could split the problem-space up. They could then customize their clients to focus on that specific subset of folding probl

        • Would be nice if they could share. Stanford's project already has a pretty good head start. And they have clients [stanford.edu] for Windows, Linux x86, and MacOSX. I've been running folding@home for a quite a while, my team has submitted over 8000 work units now. See Team Champion [stanford.edu].

      • Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:13PM (#10836735)
        Each project in this protein folding will give a better understanding of how and why certain thing occur in living thing. The Folding project at Stanford is a general protein folding to find out what angles and other attributes are normal what are abnormal. There is no particular protein structure they are looking at. These proteins could be anything between prions to humans.
        This Human Proteome Protein project is looking at primary human proteins and how they could affect human function.
        My opinion is both are important since each can affect each other for example the SARS which usually start in fowl and then transmit to human to cause SARS.

      • Because IBM are control freaks? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dioscorea (821163) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:31PM (#10836894) Homepage
        For those of you who don't know Stanford's project, called Folding@Home, uses computer cycles to observe and find out more about how proteins fold.

        Now how is this really different from IBM's project?

        A skeptic might think that IBM simply want to have a foot in the door of these big anarchic distributed projects.

        Despite the stunning power available to this kind of distributed computing, it is less useful than it appears. In my research area (computational biology) [berkeley.edu], the effort of parallelizing an algorithm and collating the results is seldom worth the dividend in speedup. Supercomputers generally run idle at most universities, for this very reason.

        Folding@home was a nice success story, and there are further applications of those models, e.g. simulations of prion aggregation [dailycal.org] (mad cow disease, Alzheimer's, etc). But (IMO) this is the exception, rather than the rule. Anyone who thinks that parallelization is a quick & easy panacea to difficult computational problems in general is living in a dream world (and I say that as a proud owner of several Macs with parallelized RISC CPUs *and* go-faster stripes).

        I've lost count of the number of times I've heard these cheap parallelization ideas floated (another example is building cheap clusters out of console hardware [uiuc.edu] which I reckon I first heard in 1996!). And every other month someone offers me supercomputer time... the problem is in redesigning the algorithm to work in parallel. Certain algorithms, such as MCMC [umn.edu], are better suited to this treatment than others.

        Of course, then you have to persuade a bunch of other scientists that Your Algorithm is the most deserving, which is a political issue (but hey, if it saves those CPUs from being used for the eminently futile task of looking for bug-eyed aliens, maybe it's a good thing...)

      • Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)

        by DeepStream (171183) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:35PM (#10836943)
        As someone who works in the field of computional biophysics, these are completely different projects. Folding@Home is designed to study the mechanism of protein folding, and uses molecular dynamics as the tool to do this. The goal of the studies is to understand at a basic scientific level just how it is that proteins fold.

        This project is designed to predict the structure of large numbers of proteins for which we know the sequence, but not the structure. The algorithms for predicting protein structure are distinct from molecular dynamics, since the end goal is very different. I believe that the particular method they are using is Rosetta, developed by at the University of Washington, with the the Institute for Systems Biology is affiliated.

        Basically it boils down to the difference between protein folding (which implies studying the mechanism) and protein structure prediction. The second is solvable to reasonable accuracy with modern methods (although not perfect), but not cheap, so a grid computing approach is a nice way to tackle the problem.

        The folding@home problem is MUCH more difficult, needing the distributed computing framework to study the folding of ONE small protein.

          • Dumb question from a bio neophyte, but wouldnt you already know the structure if you knew the sequence, since you would have an example of the protein, and the sequence supposedly more or less determines the structure?

            Short answer: no. ;)

            Longer answer: first, protein structures are incredibly complex, and in fact it's often much easier to sequence a big protein than to determine its structure. The first can be done (these days) by any half-competent lab tech working with relatively cheap equipment; th

    • Maybe they're one of the "top scientific research organizations."

      (Or maybe they should be.)

  • Trying to find diseases by using WinXX computers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:39PM (#10836407)
    I bet they find a lot caused by viruses.

  • "solve complex social problems" (Score:4, Funny)

    by wombatmobile (623057) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:42PM (#10836434)
    That's already been done, by pr0n.

  • distributed.net (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YodaToo (776221) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:43PM (#10836438) Homepage
    Where's distributed.net? Oh yeah, and some Linux clients might be nice.

  • Proteomes don't fold (Score:4, Informative)

    by Neil Blender (555885) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:43PM (#10836440)
    Proteins do.

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by multipart/mixed (163409) * on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:43PM (#10836441)
    All my Windows boxes are 5+ year old crap with the cream of the crop being a PIII 600.

    I have plenty of unused cycles on 4-way Sun boxes with gigs of spare RAM, though.

    It would be nice if they released a client in portable C.
    • All my Windows boxes are 5+ year old crap with the cream of the crop being a PIII 600.

      I have plenty of unused cycles on 4-way Sun boxes with gigs of spare RAM, though.

      Lets see: dozens or even hundreds of ``4-way Sun boxes'' versus hundreds of thousands of ``PIII 600''. Hmm. Guess I see why they didn't start with the Solaris version.

      It would be nice if they released a client in portable C.

      Yep.

      How does one go about making sure that nobody makes a variant client which phones home with bogus resul

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kbahey (102895) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:03PM (#10836646) Homepage

      Agree with the sentiment, but put it in its right magnitude, and you can see why Windows is the sole platform here.

      How many people all over the world are like you, with CPU cycles to spare on non Wintel boxes?

      How many PCs are around the world, and how many run Windows?

      How many of those are used at home or small business?

      Don't get me wrong, I am a UNIX/Linux fan, and dislike Windows. But if you want volume, Windows is where it is at the moment. Having said that, they have to release something more portable in the future. Just like SETI and others did.

  • Poor first impression (Score:3, Informative)

    by nanter (613346) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:48PM (#10836497)
    Ok, since I've recently rebuilt my Windoze laptop here at work, I figured I'd give it a shot...

    Well, not only do they not support any clients besides Windoze, but if you're operating on any reasonably secured LAN where the firewall doesn't allow you to willy-nilly connect over SSL ports (443) using proprietary protocols (gasp, imagine that), it isn't going to work.

    Not really a great way to get off on the right foot with this effort. Make it impossible to use by the majority of those interested by precluding other OSes and folks on corporate networks without proxies.

    Back to Folding@Home for me!

    • Well, some dummy some where is going to open up thier network and get hammered by hackers. Does this require you to be on broadband so your results can be sent quickly to other parts of the calculaton that may need them? One problem I have with this (capitalist pig that I am) is why should I GIVE my CPU cycles to solve problems that DRUG companies will MAKE Boatloads of money with? Say in the future I got a disease which has a cure developed by my participation in the project with my spare cycles. Will *I*
      • "Say in the future I got a disease which has a cure developed by my participation in the project with my spare cycles. Will *I* get any consideration for a discount? Will I get ANY profit for my time & resources. NO."

        You might live instead of die. I think I would consider that a profit.

        Oh, and if you look at the documentation on the site they say:

        "World Community Grid, with technology and funding provided by the IBM Corporation, is making grid technology available to public and not-for-profit organi
        • They didn't say they were targeting FATAL diseases. But those would be a good start ;) Public and non-profit are organizations like the American Cancer Society and others who DO sponsor research by drug companies. Universities are likely users too and often the research is paid for by industry but the "organization" is non-profit. There really isn't a good way to police the system since it's 10 Million computers something could sneak in. As long as they keep out the obvious research that is FOR-PROFIT I li

  • Other Clients ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by richg74 (650636) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:49PM (#10836500) Homepage
    The client is currently available for Windows XP, 2000, ME, and 98.

    I've been doing SETI@home for a while now, and was pleased to see the announcement of this in the press. I was less pleased when I went to the web site [worldcommunitygrid.org], and found out that (as it says above) the only client was for Windows. Since I use only Linux these days, I guess that leaves me out.

    I hope that with IBM's involvement, and stated committment to Linux, this will change soon. I sent them a note, using the "Contact Us" form on the web site, and would encourage others to do the same.

    (Incidentally, I've been running SETI@home initially on Windows, now on Linux, using the command-line client in both cases. I find I get ~50% more work units/time with Linux, and less impact on interactive use of the machine.)

  • Who benefits? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Suppose this effort discovers something. Just exactly who will own the patent?

    Suppose it leads to the creation of a new revolutionary drug. Just exactly who will get the profits from the drug? (And who will have to travel to Canada to buy it?)

  • There's news from Science [sciencemag.org] that a new Hexid-computer from Japan will be able to accurately predict social patterns in cities large enough (> 4 million inhabitants), if this is true we truly have a new future ahead of us since this could change society in so many ways.

    Additionally I think it's good that IBM too have an interest [ibm.com] in this area, since 1) competition is always good and 2) it makes for more accurate results. With some luck we can have peta-byte based grid by 2007.

  • United Devices (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kippy (416183) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:54PM (#10836550)
    Is the cancer research they mention part of the United Devices [grid.org] effort or is this something different? The article confused me a bit on that count. It would be a shame to duplicate efforts.
    • grid.org [grid.org] and World Community Grid [worldcommunitygrid.org] are the same project. See this discussion thread [grid.org] from grid.org.

    • Re:United Devices (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Although United Devices is involved in running both the IBM World Community grid Proteome project, and also the older cure Cancer project at http://www.grid.org/, they are unrelated. In fact UD's grid.org is running both at the same time.

      If you are a grid.org member, then your existing client will be able to participate in the same Proteome project. (You have the option of opting out of the Proteome project if you want to continue to exclusively run the Cancer project only.)

      If you download the World Com

  • IP rights? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16 2004, @05:59PM (#10836604)
    What are they doing with the data they process? I don't see anything on the site that says. I can't say I'm very impressed if this project isn't using OSS and releasing their processed data into the public domain, especially since they're relying on volunteers for their processing.
  • While a cluster of humans has the potential to make an excellent computational resource, eventually the human nodes would catch on and almost certainly resent it. They may even revolt, causing any AI which depend on the resource to have to enslave the humans or face extinction. Doesn't anybody at IBM read Dan Simmons???

  • BOINC is better (Score:5, Informative)

    by MikeCapone (693319) <skelterhell AT yahoo DOT com> on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:01PM (#10836615) Homepage Journal
    I'd encourage all of you guys to support BOINC, an open source and multi-platform architecture instead.
  • How about IBM put this (in a permanent manor) on their PC's and offer a discount for purchasers? Or on the machines they give away for free to charities/schools?

    Seems like a transparent way to get their goals accomplished.

  • Boinc? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by beeglebug (767468) * on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:04PM (#10836653)
    Whats wrong with Boinc? I thought it did exactly the same thing, only with more OS's supported, and the familiar SETI name behind it can't hurt either... Why try and compete?
  • If we were to use these millions of particularly unspecialized (in terms of computational ability) home PCs, wouldn't the cost be in pollution? You're consuming lots energy to crunch some numbers... you'd be plenty more efficient if you used some supercomputers. I think it's a good idea, but I wonder if this wouldn't cause more problems.
  • Any distributed software needs to have the following requirements for me to install it on my system:
    - open source
    - free (as in beer)
    - portable code, or multicode
    - protected against buffer overflows etc. (managed code)
    - signed updates of grid software, grid client software and working packages
    - nice interface (including a good web server)
    - only for use for non-profit organizations
    - and I wan't to choose my projects

    Sun (or any one else), hurry up please. I'm NOT going to run any trap that's now on the market
    • I forgot the open, non proprietary protocol part. And please replace fucking by freakin' in the above text :)
    • Any distributed software needs to have the following requirements for me to install it on my system:

      - open source

      - free (as in beer)

      - portable code, or multicode

      - protected against buffer overflows etc. (managed code)

      - signed updates of grid software, grid client software and working packages

      - nice interface (including a good web server)

      - only for use for non-profit organizations

      - and I wan't to choose my projects

      Bruce Perens called - He said, "Step off, bitch. I'm the biggest Open Source asshole

  • Gee... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dirtside (91468) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:12PM (#10836719) Journal
    This is great and all, but I don't know if humanitarians are really the best processors to use in a grid computer.
  • Is IBM planning to put the proteins they "discover" with this project in the public domain, or keep them proprietary like the Folding@Home project, that subsidizes filthy rich drug companies with your spare cycles? Or is there a more sinister plan, in which "humanitarian" is a parallel to "vegetarian"?

  • Not all projects are truly humanitarian (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Magickcat (768797) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:29PM (#10836876)
    Some distributed computing projects appear benevolent, but the actual results remain the property of commercial organisations/universities and trusts and there's no guarantees that the results won't be used purely from a commercial and non-humanitarian point of view. I haven't looked into this new IBM project, but I'd like to advise people to always read the fine print in who own what when the project is completed.

    In the past, I've investigated a couple of projects, that upon closer scrutiny look quite troubling. They often fail to address what the actual project is specifically, and who will profit from the results financially. Instead, their websites are full of feel good graphics, but the bucks stop at a pharmaceutical company's coffers when you look at the fine details, and there's no discussion of what the findings will be specifically used for, and by whom. In some cases, the whole issue of profit and ownership is quite smoothly whitewashed.
  • There won't be any idle CPU cycles :P

  • Slashdot 'team' built (Score:3, Informative)

    by w98 (831730) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @08:00PM (#10837793) Homepage

    In the time it took me to create a Slashdot login to be able to post a message here, 4 other people have already joined the Grid 'team' for Slashdotters. Apparently they're tracking progress and awarding 'points' for tasks completed and our team is ranked 35th overall at last check.

    For those interested, the team name is 'Slashdot Users' and more information can be found here [worldcommunitygrid.org]

  • Hate to be a nay sayer.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StikyPad (445176) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @08:46PM (#10838143) Homepage
    But this is run by United Devices, the same people who brought us the Cancer cure [grid.org]. Or did they? If you glance at the forums, you might notice one of the biggest gripes is that UD provides a minimal amount of feedback and status updates. They do little to nothing to promote the projects they have running, although they let you think there are some sort of prizes to be had by amassing the most points.

    The truth is, I don't care whether they're in it for a profit or for posterity, but if someone's using my resources, I'd at least like to know how they're being used, and what effect, if any, it has had. The SETI project might be futile, but at least someone lets us know what's going on occasionally, which is far more than I can say for the UD projects thus far. For all I know, the cancer distributed computing project has been abandoned in favor of more promising avenues of research. Personally I'll stick with SETI.
    • Well, you're our first patient then...quick everyone set their computers to research internal "warm and fuzzy" feelings...could take a lot of CPU cycles to crack this one...
    • this looks like a perfect and cheap way for intelligence services to crack all those rsa keys they ever wanted.

      When you are finished with your tin-foil hat can I borrow it for a moment? I have to write a paper on the JFK assassination.

    • Re:seriously (Score:4, Funny)

      by prowley (587280) on Tuesday November 16 2004, @06:20PM (#10836789)
      would you seriously consider running a closed-source application, that is a) cosuming your entire cpu resources b) recieves instructions from the internet c) sends back information gathered at your computer d) has not provided any scientific value (a la seti@home)
      Please, lets have less of this Microsoft Windows bashing and get back to the subject at hand.

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