XtremWeb is creating a distributed computing
infrastructure to process many differentkinds of projects. It plans to demonstrate the
infrastructure withthe Auger project, which will simulate "air showers," phenomena caused by
cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere.
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idlepower.net will be the first project
to create distributed supercomputing applications. Current
applications solve problems that are very easy to parallelize and which have
small amounts of data to transfer between the server and the client.
idlepower.net will solve large problems that don't easily split into smaller
problems. It will require participants to have fast Internet connections
(like ADSL or cable), and to have 1 gigabyte or more of free disk space.
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The GriPhyN Project will
implement the first petabyte-scale computational environment for data-
intensive science in the 21st century. The environment is called a
Petascale Virtual Data Grid (PVDG). This project may or may not be open to
public participation.
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NANO@Home is currently in the concept stage, but will hopefully be
implemented in the next few years. The proposal outlines a project which would use distributed computing to
solve problems in the field of nanotechnology, specifically to derive
nanoscale equivalents of real-world parts like bolts, screws, vavles,
wheels, hinges, etc., contributing to a Nano-widget Library of devices
from which more complex nanoscale machines could be designed.
If you are interested in contributing to the design and implementation
of this project, please review the proposal and contact
Robert Bradbury.
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The PhotonStar Project will be a
distributed human project to support Optical SETI. Individuals
with a PC, an Internet connection, a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver,
and a telescope will be able to attach a laser detector to their telescope
and use their PC to join their telescope with thousands of others to create a
giant telescope. This giant telescope will be used to detect laser pulses
from a specific star system at a specific time.
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Compute Power Market
will create a computation power market based on
grid computing technologies to allow customers to access computation power
in the same way they access electrical power, at market-based prices.
The project "seeks to address complexities involved in developing a technology
infrastructure that lets the users and resource providers to operate under
computational economy over the Internet."
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A paper
titled "Distributed Molecular Modeling over Very-Low-Bandwidth Computer
Networks" proposes a molecular modeling or nanotechnology project designed
that will work well over geographically-diverse computers and/or computers
with low communication bandwidth.
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Grobots will be
"a massively distributed supercomputing platform for the ongoing modelling
and simulation of evolvable nanotechnology." It will provide a Java-based
"virtual environment for self-replicating machines running evolving software
to be tested, evaluated and even farmed." The project is in early development:
the architecture design should be completed by late 2001 or early 2002.
In the meantime you can register on the main page to show your interest in
the project and to volunteer your Java coding skills and writing/artistic
skills if you would like to contribute to the project.
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The Internet Movie Project was created in early 2001. It will use Internet-based collaboration to
create computer animations and movies. It currently has three projects in
the early design stages: "Wrackoff," "Make or Break," and "The Inspector".
You have to register to view the discussion forums about these projects. The project needs
graphic designers, web designers, and marketers now. It will need renderers
later when the projects are ready to render.
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The Cure Multiple Sclerosis Web Site
will search for molecules which bind with proteins that
cause Multiple Sclerosis in the hopes of finding a drug to cure this disease.
Note: the project website appears to be unavailable occasionally. If you
get a message saying the website does not exist or the link does not work,
please wait an hour or two and try accessing the site again.
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The Worldwide Lexicon (WWL)
project will use volunteer human translators to translate
words and phrases between languages, with an emphasis on uncommon language
pairs, and will use a Gnutella-like network of translation and dictionary
computers around the world to store the translations and make them freely
available to anyone. An HTTP interface to the translation network will provide
software developers a communication protocol with which to incorporate WWL
dictionary functionality into many different kinds of software applications
and web services. The project was be officially announced at the O'Reilly
& Associates emerging technologies conference in mid-May, 2002.
One of the first applications to be built from this project will be
GNUTrans,
a distributed translation service. The service will "crawl popular websites,
news sources, etc., and divide texts into small blocks to be translated and
revised by human volunteers" via Instant Messenger, using a lexicon@home
client application. GNUTrans project hopes to begin a public Beta test in
December, 2002.
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Décrypthon,hosted by the French organization Téléthon 2002, will decrypt
proteomes to fight against neuromuscular and other diseases. It should
be similar to the Téléthon 2001 project which began in March, 2002.
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NFSNET will "use
the Number Field Sieve to find the factors of increasingly large numbers."
The project is in the early stages of development. You can track its
progress through its status page or by subscribing to a mailing
list to receive updates about the project. The project client is being
Beta tested as of November 12, 2002. You can participate in the Beta test
by following the instructions on the join page.
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Astropulse
will analyze radio telescope signals to look for
"short broadband signals that could be evidence of black hole evaporation,
pulsars, or life." The project (and the BOINC platform on which it will
run) is current in beta testing, with all of the users it needs. The test
will be expanded to more users in the future. Version 0.08 of the software
is available for Windows, Mac OS/X and Unix variants as of January 16, 2003.
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The ISBN Database Project
will "create a multilingual database of books with well-defined remote access
protocols and free individual access." It should catalog books the way MusicBrainz catalogs
music. The project is current in development, but you can register to receive email
notification when the project website is officially launched.
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