The End of an Era
Published April 26th, 2007For a long time now, 6 years in fact, I have been an active member of the grid.org distributed computing project. But now, the project has ended and they are closing down. I helped work on research into cancer, anthrax, proteome folding and smallpox. I do believe that this project and my contributions were helpful and meaningful. I personally contributed 3 years, 201 days of computing time to the projects. But with them closing down, my idle cpu cycles are going to have to go to someone else. But who?
The Contenders
distributed.net
Probably the most technically advanced, but mostly devoted to finding prime numbers or cracking cryptography keys or obscure mathematical constructs. Interesting, but not really compelling.
World Community Grid
Primarily sponsored by IBM. Projects include Muscular Dystrophy research, genomics, cancer, proteome folding, AIDS. All noble pursuits. I am particulary interested in the genomics, proteomics and cancer research - but that’s because that’s my job.
Compute Against Cancer
Run by the National Cancer Institute. More tissue research and proteomics. Again, this is very important to me - but it’s also my job. This warrants some discussion - do I believe that what I contribute at work is as important as what my idle cpu cycles do? Is the computing power I donate actually more important than my job in cancer research? A bit of a sobering thought. Can I deal with the possibility that my computer doing nothing helps cancer research more than what I do every day for 8 hours? I’m not sure how I feel about this. Though perhaps it makes good sense to put the WCG or CAC on my workstation. Then I’m always contributing. Morally, I kinda like that idea. But what for my home machine? More cancer research? I do strongly believe in it. Hm.
SETI@Home
The granddaddy of them all. SETI@Home revolutionized scientific research. That’s no exagerration. It was the first publicly available distributed research program. And it was VERY popular. A hit. People donated tons of cpu hours. It really shifted the paradigm of how to do complex research - away from supercomputers and mainframes to distributed solutions. And I was a part of it. I joined SETI@Home in May of 1999 and have donated 31,251 hours of cpu time. The account is so old, it’s under “ender” instead of “cephyn” - and since they migrated to a new system a while back, it has no clue when I last turned in a unit. But obviously not since at least 2001.
The SETI project is the most fascinating, and the most risk-reward. We may never find a signal. We may even be looking at the wrong stuff. But it has the highest payoff. No one computer is going to cure cancer or AIDS. And sure, one computer may find a huge prime number - but so what? We knew it was there. But with SETI - one computer can find what would be the most important scientific discovery, maybe ever. And now, with the discovery of the planet in the Gliese system - maybe it’s more likely than we once thought. It’s the most romantic project on my list, the one closest to my heart. The cancer projects are so very important too though, with clear benefits to humanity. But SETI - it’s art.
So guys, what do I do? Do I go with my heart and choose SETI? Is that a waste of cycles, should I look for disease cures or (please don’t say this) mathematics solutions? What do you all think? I am leaning going back to SETI.
Doing something at all with your idle cycles means that it’s not a waste–only doing nothing is. Perhaps you can do like you said and do the cancer research on your workstation and SETI at home–that way you are getting the best of both worlds–promoting research for humanity AND art.