Projects

Homebrew Projects

RSA Encryption Test

This project is one suggested by Morrison that we do to test the grid once it is up and running. Essentially, the program takes a very long encrypted number and converts it into the original number. The RSA algorithim is one of the first successful encrypting programs and it was developed in 1977. The decryption of an encrypted number can take a single computer a long time, but with a grid computer the task can be divided up and easily done.

NCSSM Computational Chemistry Program

On request of Mr. Robert Gotwals of the Chemistry Department, we will provide a server to host student chemistry problems. Computational chemistry problems can be calculation-intensive, but with the advent of mass grid computing these problems have been able to be tackled and solved in a relatively short time compared to a single computer.

Supported Projects

Projects here at NCSSM will have priority over the supported projects, but when we have no projects we will run these two on the grid. Please help us support these projects as well and add these two to your BOINC manager. Thank you.

SETI@home

SETI@home is a project run by the University of California at Berkeley, the same people who built BOINC, which searches for artificial radio transmissions signaling extraterristrial life. They use a large radio telescope to essentially record all of the radio waves from space and use their grid to help decipher it all. With 1.3 million computers involved in the grid, it is currently the largest grid computer with a speed of 265 TFLOPS and a total runtime of 2,000,000 years.

World Community Grid

The World Community Grid is not a single project, but houses several different projects with humanitarian goals. The main projects right now on the grid include FIGHTAIDS@home, which analyzes different drugs and their ability to inhibit the HIV protease that causes the HIV to reproduce; Human Proteome Folding, which helps us understand the function of many proteins in the human body that we don’t understand yet; and Help Defeat Cancer, which analyzes various treatments and their ability to fight breast, head and neck cancers, and others. This grid is sponsored by IBM and has over 560,000 machines online with 82,000 years of run time combined.