Project information
| Status | Finalist |
| URL | Go to website |
| Category | Culture New media |
| Country | United States |
| Operational areas | Urban, Rural |
| Target groups | Children, Youth, Women, Men, Seniors |
| Fixed connection | Dialup, DSL, IDSN, Cable |
| Wireless connection | WiFi, WiMax, Satellite Any personal computer with any kind of internet connection |
| Access points | Government office, Business, Home, School, Library, Telecenter, Cafe |
| Interact | Desktop Computer, Laptop |
| Software License Types | Open Source |
Project location
Random images Challenge 2008
GridRepublic
- Brief description
- GridRepublic is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization created to provide supercomputing resources to public interest research, by use of volunteer distributed computing.
- Vision, Objectives and Goals
Historically, significant increases in available computing power have always enabled new insights and discoveries in all areas of human endeavor.
Reaching our goal of ten million participants would create a resource a factor of magnitude larger than any existing supercomputer. Computations that would take tens of thousands of years to calculate on an ordinary computer could be processed in just a few weeks. Such power would open new avenues of inquiry in drug discovery, genetics, environmental study, physics, and other areas.
- How does ICT contribute to the organisational objectives
- Our project is purely an ICT initiative: we use computer and social networking to create a world-class computing resource by enabling participants to volunteer their spare computing cycles to research projects which they elect to support: cancer research, climate study, astronomy, basic physics, etc.
- Transferability
- It is certainly possible for others to reproduce what we are doing, but due to the nature of web technology, this is not necessary for the global growth of the project or the concept. More relevant would be efforts to create new distributed computing projects such those listed on our site. Because the underlying software is open-source, such initiatives require primarily skilled programmers and access to a relatively ordinary web server. As we grow traffic at the GridRepublic website, we make it easier and easier for scientists around the world to launch new research projects, since we make it easier for these newer projects to connect with the participant-volunteers who ultimately provide the computing capacity.
It is interesting to observe that, by such means, researchers in developing countries can get access to supercomputing resources not typically available in-country. See for example Africa@home: Through this organization, African scientists use donated computing resources to study issues of local concern (currently, the spread of Malaria). Absent the donated distributed resources, such research would never be done; the required computing power would be prohibitively expensive. Many other such projects are possible. - Project summary
- Our ongoing work is in effect to evangelize for volunteer distributed computing. We have created a portal where users can discover projects, and we have greatly simplified the user interface to make participation as simple as choose-click-and-run. And of course this has been entirely an ICT project.
Looking forward, our activities are (1) to continue to evolve the web portal and underlying technologies, (2) to spread the word through traditional and online media, and (3) in particular, to evolve the online community and social networking aspects of our site.
It should be noted that for all the technology involved, the underlying work of GridRepublic is essentially social: we need to engage large numbers of volunteers. And as a consequence, it should be noted that this work is an exercise in scientific outreach, an opportunity to advance public understanding of-- and public involvement in-- the scientific enterprise.
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