Who benefits?- Three projects currently receive spare computing cycles from Progress Thru Processors: ClimatePrediction.net, a website research project to track and predict changes to the Earth's climate; Rosetta@home, dedicated to finding medical cures for cancer and other diseases; and Africa@home, which is focused on developing strategies to combat malaria in Africa.
Other massive distributed computing projects include Folding@Home, (world's largest disease-fighting project) a complex protein folding and molecular dynamics simulation.and SETI@Home, a project searching vast quantities of space for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Join IT Guru Leo LaPorte's Folding@Home Team. Help find cures for diseases!
How does it Work? Distributed computing projects focus on using the computing power wasted that by computers left on at the office or home to help speed the process of performing complex calculations.
According to Deborah Conrad, Intel vice president and general manager of its Corporate Marketing Group,. "By simply running an application on your computer, which uses very little incremental resources, you can expand computing resources to researchers working to make the world a better place."
Small Tings Make a Big Difference
I agree with Ms. Conrad,
"In the same spirit as Intel's Small Things Challenge, Progress Thru Processors underscores our belief that small contributions made by individuals can collectively have a far-reaching impact on our world," Intel's Progress Thru Processors project runs in the background when a computer is not being fully utilized, and the company designed the program to not affect performance or any other tasks.
Sign up for Progress Thru Processors at Facebook.com/ProgressThruProcessors.
Another way you can "Do Something 4 Nothing"!
You CAN make a difference!