Facebook and Intel want You to Donate Your Spare Cycles
Facebook and Intel want You to Donate Your Spare Cycles
Posted 08/04/2009 at 8:01am
| 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
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jakesty@aol.com
August 04, 2009 at 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.
nekollx
August 05, 2009 at 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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Svetty Parabols
August 04, 2009 at 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"
nekollx
August 04, 2009 at 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.
Digital-Kid0101
August 04, 2009 at 8:55am
Yeah then a hax0r can hax that program and then he's got acess to alot of computers.
nekollx
August 04, 2009 at 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.
nekollx
August 04, 2009 at 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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