Facebook and Intel want You to Donate Your Spare Cycles
Posted 08/04/09 at 11:01:10 AM by Paul Lilly
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Intel and GridRepublic joined forces this week to launch a Facebook application that will tap into your PCs spare processing cycles to both fight diseases and study climate change.
Intel calls the application 'Progress Thru Processors,' which is built on the Facebook platform and gives users the ability to choose up to three distributed computing projects, including Rosetta@home (find cures for diseases), Climateprediction.net (aimed at gaining an increased understanding of global climate change), and Africa@home (currently focused on finding optimal strategies to combat malaria).
"By simply running an application on your computer, which uses very little incremental resources, you can expand computing resources to researchers," Deborah Conrad, Intel vice president and general manager of corporate marketing, said in a statement.
The application, which was launched Monday as a public beta, will only fire up when the PC has processing cycles to spare. You can download the app here.
Image Credit: Intel via CNet
A shame
Submitted by N25PHILLY on Wed, 08/05/2009 - 4:12am
folding@home is the best place to send those extra cycles. There are so many people at there that do want to do the right thing for themselves and the world and they just don't know the best way how. Programs like SENS have so much potential and would literally wipe a number of diseases off the face of the Earth almost instantly if successful. Why worry about alzhiemers or most cancers if you can simply just prevent them from occurring?
This disdirection is why healthcare is failing now and will fail under any reform that comes. Why spend all you money treating diseases when you can prevent them? We can affordably determine what people are prone to getting and work on ways to stop them from occurring, or at least giving them more time before it sets in. This is better than nothing, but only a small start.
There is so much information out there on how to solve many problems and people simply just don't know about it. Please take a minute to go to www.imminst.org and find out for yourself. To stay on topic I hope they add folding@home!
Submitted by jakesty@aol.com on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 8:36pm
What's to stop any organization, even just a few employees from illegally using this system for their own purposes? Like cracking codes or using it for terrorist activities maybe for some foreign country? They could and you'd never know about it. The government could also ask these companies to provide some "time" to crack codes, and again it would happen in the back ground without our knowledge.
A little conspiracy theory I know, but it's not that far fetched.
depends on the parent
Submitted by nekollx on Wed, 08/05/2009 - 8:21am
depends on the parent company i guess. The point is the end user is just sharing clock cyccles how the server decides to use them however...
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Why doesn't Intel just
Submitted by Svetty Parabols on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 11:23am
Why doesn't Intel just donate a few "super computers" dedicated for this reason. They expect me to put wear and tear on my rig, use my electricity, and slow my computer down for when they could donate some sort of computer for a big tax right off? How will this research lower my medical bills? These big corporations soak the consumer for every penny they can get out of them and they expect us to just hand over our computers?
I'm sorry.. this may be a good cause, but chalk this up to a big "FAIL"
Submitted by nekollx on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 11:42am
cause some tech savey people were aready do this of their own violition? Intel is just brining protine folding to the masses is all.
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
Submitted by erolsipar on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 9:43am
Send me a Core i9 and Ill do a science donating lab. :)
This is dumb
Submitted by Digital-Kid0101 on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 8:55am
Yeah then a hax0r can hax that program and then he's got acess to alot of computers.
Submitted by nekollx on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 9:06am
no tghat would be you.
Distributed processor cyccles does not grant root access to the computer. AT WORST a hacker could force the program to eat processor cycles. Don't you think if folding@home could be used for pc hijacking it would have happend by now Noob?
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
Submitted by jess6369 on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 8:32am
just another publicity stunt for all the fools on facebook.
Submitted by savior on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 8:27am
awwww Folding@Home's little sisters and brothers
Submitted by nekollx on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 8:28am
and yet no F@H or SETI@home....
------------------------------
Coming soon to Lulu.com --Tokusatsu Heroes--
Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
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