Grid Computes 420 Years Worth of Data in 4 Months

Da Massive writes with a ComputerWorld article about a grid computing approach to the malaria disease. By running the problem across 5,000 computer for a total of four months, the WISDOM project analyzed some 80,000 drug compounds every hour. The search for new drug compounds is normally a time-intensive process, but the grid approach did the work of 420 years of computation in just 16 weeks. Individuals in over 25 countries participated. " All computers ran open source grid software, gLite, which allowed them to access central grid storage elements which were installed on Linux machines located in several countries worldwide. Besides being collected and saved in storage elements, data was also analyzed separately with meaningful results stored in a relational database. The database was installed on a separate Linux machine, to allow scientists to more easily analyze and select useful compounds." Are there any other 'big picture' problems out there you think would benefit from the grid approach?

Wow, 25% scalability! Amazing!

[Saint Stephen]

(420 years / 16 weeks) / 5000 computers = 1:4 scalability!!!

Frickin amazing! No one's EVER done that before.

Re:Malaria?

[alshithead]

When you consider global warming...malaria WILL become a huge problem for many areas that haven't had to worry about it before now. This is in no way a waste. Buy your quinine now and while you're doing it...buy stock in the companies that manufacture it.

Re:Malaria?

[iminplaya]

Unfortunately, most of the people killed are considered somewhat "less than" human. It goes a long way to explain the lack of interest, while other diseases are more politically expedient. The profit margins just aren't there.

Re:Malaria?

[iminplaya]

Actually I'm sure they would love to move to more fertile, profitable areas. Unfortunately, there are others with a different agenda who like to keep them away. Those people are getting much more outside help than the starving kids. Let's not forget the economics of the arms trade with african warlords and corrupt tinpot generals who are, of course, "good for our interests". I'm also aware that basic sanitation and clean water, both cheap and easy to achieve with the right thinking, will take care of probably a full 90% of the problem. Their old traditions are responsible for much of it. The parent's link lead me to this [archive.idrc.ca]. It has to be just the tip of the iceberg. So the chemical insecticides are not needed. There are far too many unexplored, easily accessable natural solutions.

Outsiders really aren't interested in Africa's problems, unless it interferes with "free trade". This will be solved by the Africans with relatively little outside help. It's just the usual numbers game.

I've heard that gin is a good mosquito repellent.

Re:the biggest issue

[scottv67]

You know, I think the thing that aggravates me the most is that these distributed computing systems are helping drug companies find cures to illnesses using OUR processing power and computers WE paid for, only to sell us the drug that they would have been hard pressed to develop without our hardware back to us at an extremely inflated price.

Posting a reply to your comment is going to un-do my moderation this morning but I can't let your comment go by without a response. Yes, we (people who run the distributed computing clients on our home PCs) are contributing OUR resources to large pharmaceutical companies (directly or indirectly). I am running the F@H client on multiple PCs (at my home) that I bought with my take-home pay. Furthermore, my electric bill is impacted by having those PCs running (my electricity is about $0.03/kwh off-peak) *and* there is an additional cooling load on my home's HVAC system in the summer. Yes, the drug companies are getting something from me without ever acknowledging the money I have invested in helping them produce a new drug. But I don't do it for the recognition or the fame (okay, I do watch the F@H stats to see how many points I am producing each week compared to the other contributors on my F@H team) but instead I do it for the greater good. Is it possible that a company like Pfizer will take the results from my F@H clients and create their next blockbuster drug? Yes, it could happen. Will I be pissed if they don't cut me in on the action? No.

Regarding your comment: "only to sell us the drug...at an extremely inflated price." Who really knows what the true price of a drug is? How many millions need to go into the salaries of researchers, sophisticated lab equipment and large facilities to house that stuff? How do you *know* the price of a drug is "extremely inflated"?

If you don't like the distributed computing project like Folding At Home (F@H), please be aware that you don't have to run the software and you can feel quite smug every night when you tuck yourself into bed knowing that all of your home PCs are powered-off. You can even have a little chuckle and say "Suckers! My electric bill won't suffer just to benefit the drug companies!" before you turn out the light. But when the next big life-saving drug comes to market and it turns out that YOU need it to live, feel free to not purchase that drug. Show those evil drug companies that they won't get one penny of your hard-earned money.

Last year, I donated a big chunk (thousands) of my take-home pay to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. While I am not personally afflicted by those diseases nor is anyone in my family, I donated to that organization in the hope that a cure will be found. [My donation was not tax-deductible so I did not make the donation in the hope of reducing the amount of income tax I would pay for 2006.] I run the F@H client on my home PCs for the same reason: Somebody somewhere (maybe someone who hasn't even been born yet) will benefit from my home PCs crunching numbers throughout the night. *I* paid for these PCs, *I* pay for the power to run them, *I* pay for the extra cooling load they generate in the summer. I am doing this in the hope that someone else on the planet will benefit from my "investment".