Introduction

Why use one computer to solve a large problem when you can split that large problem up into smaller problems that thousands of computers can work on simultaneously? That's the concept behind Distributed Computing. Efforts are underway to fight cancer, prove the existence of extraterrestrials, crack encryption codes, and unlock the secrets of our genetic composition, just for starters. You can play an integral role in helping those projects to succeed by putting your PC's idle time to good use. The premise: choose the program you want to participate with, download their software client that runs when your PC is idle, join team TechIMO to track your progress, and have fun.

Find-a-Drug Team Stats Team Info Download Join Team Find-a-Drug is a not for profit distributed computing project which was set up by Treweren Consultants, the company who developed the THINK software for virtual screening. Find-a-Drug aims to run a series of projects in parallel addressing a number of diseases which have a major impact on health. Members may elect to opt in and out of projects at any time using the Find-a-Drug control panel. The progress of each project as well as contributions of members are provided on the Web Site. The current Projects that are running or will be run in the near future include, Bio-terrorism, Cancer, HIV, Respitory disease (Sars), Multiple Sclerosis , Pesticide/Herbicide and others are on their way.

UD Think Cancer Project Team Stats Team Page Download Join Team The Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project is asking you to volunteer your PC to help process molecular research being conducted by the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford in England and the National Foundation for Cancer Research. To participate, you simply download a very small, no cost, non-invasive software program that works like a screensaver: it runs when your computer isn't being used, a nd processes research until you need your machine. Your computer never leaves your desk, and the project never interrupts your usual PC use. There is no cost to participate and no impact on your computer use. The project software cannot detect or transfer anything on your machine but project-specific information. It just allows your computer to screen molecules that may be developed into drugs to fight cancer. Each individual computer analyzes a few molecules and then sends the results back over the Internet for further research. The goal is to enlist enough volunteers to provide very rich and thorough results to the University of Oxford for further research. This project is anticipated to be the largest computational chemistry project ever undertaken and represents a genuine hope to find a better way to fight cancer.

eCompute ECC2-109 Team Stats Team Info Download Join Team ECC2 is a distributed computing project to solve the Certicom ECC2-109 challenge by testing their encryption method. Each of the computers runs a program that computes DP (Distinguished Points) values. The DPs are uploaded to a main server which checks to see if anyone has uploaded a matching DP. The software is a very small program that runs in the Windows command line interface or as service. Optional third party graphical interfaces are available.

Folding@home Team Stats Team Page Download Join Team Understanding how proteins self-assemble ("protein folding") is a holy grail of modern molecular biophysics. What makes it such a great challenge is its complexity, which renders simulations of folding extremely computationally demanding and difficult to understand. Why do we care about protein folding? Understanding more about protein folding can lead to breakthroughs in disease research, nanotechnology, and much more. Complete details are available in Folding@home's scientific backgrounder. To solve the protein folding problem, we need to break the microsecond barrier. The Folding@home group has developed a new way to simulate protein folding which can break the microsecond barrier by dividing the work between multiple processors in a new way -- with a near linear speed up in the number of processors. Thus, with 1000 processors, we can break the microsecond barrier and unlock the mystery of how proteins fold.

Genome@home Team Stats Team Page Download FAQ How is this project supposed to help us understand "real" genomes and proteins? Genome@home studies real genomes and proteins directly, by designing new sequences for existing 3-D protein structures, which come from real genomes. The protein structure files that are sent out as work contain the Cartesian atomic coordinates of a protein. This data was obtained experimentally through X-ray crystallography or NMR techniques. Note that this was not done by us; thousands of scientists have spent decades compiling this data, which is generously made freely available to the public. By designing new sequences that could form these specific protein structures, we're setting the stage to attack a number of significant contemporary issues in structural biology, genetics, and medicine. For example, the Genome@home data will be used to: Try to unravel a fundamental issue in the "protein folding problem" (which itself lies at the heart of a huge amount of modern biomedical research): the fact that thousands of different sequences can all form the same three-dimensional structure. Predict the functions of newly discovered genes and protein structures. Modern approaches to structural biology, known as "proteomics" or "structural genomics", often solve protein structures without knowing what the proteins do. Because techniques for function prediction tend to work best with large amounts of sequence data, a virtual library of sequences for a new protein structure will be an invaluable resource. Potentially design and make new versions of existing proteins for use in medical therapy. More teams to be added SOON.