The World Community Grid in cooperation with IBM have found a way to speed up Cancer research. The developers behind the World Community Grid have found a way to recognize when protein samples undergo a solidifying process called crystallization, which makes the proteins ready for further examination by special x-ray. Up until recently the only way to do this was by human review. By utilizing the power of the World Community Grid Cancer research can be dramatically accelerated.

What is a community grid?

The community grid is a sharing of computer resources. You donate not your computer but your systems resources. When your computer is idle or between key strokes of light computer use the grid can utilize your  unused system resources. You install software that

enables the grid to access your system and utilize it’s power. This software is available for Linux, Windows and Mac systems.

Other interesting facts about the World Community Grid

50,981 CPU-years have been contributed to the World Community Grid

The World Community Grid uses 54 years of computing per day

22,000 devices were added to the Grid in April

The World Community Grid provides 180 teraFLOPS of speed

Here is a link to learn more.

Finally Linux, Windows and Mac users can work together on something without arguing over who has the best operating system, or maybe not we will see.