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grid.org was a website and online community established in 2001 for
cluster computing A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The compo ...
and grid computing software users. For six years it operated several different volunteer computing projects that allowed members to donate their spare computer cycles to worthwhile causes. In 2007, it became a community for open source cluster and grid computing software. After around 2010 it redirected to other sites.


Volunteer computing projects

From its establishment in April 2001 until April 27, 2007, grid.org was the website and organization that ran distributed computing projects such as the
United Devices United Devices, Inc. was a privately held, commercial volunteer computing company that focused on the use of grid computing to manage high-performance computing systems and enterprise cluster management. Its products and services allowed users ...
Cancer Research Project, led by Jikku Venkat, Ph.D and was sponsored philanthropically by
United Devices United Devices, Inc. was a privately held, commercial volunteer computing company that focused on the use of grid computing to manage high-performance computing systems and enterprise cluster management. Its products and services allowed users ...
(UD) and members participated in volunteer computing by running the UD Agent software (version 3.0).


Cancer Research Project

The United Devices Cancer Research Project, which began in 2001, was seeking possible drugs for the treatment of cancer using distributed computing. There were around 150,000 users in the United States and 170,000 in Europe along with hundreds of thousands more in other parts of the world. The project was an alliance of several companies and organisations: * United Devices Inc. *
National Foundation for Cancer Research National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1973. It provides funds to cancer scientists and researchers, with the ultimate goal of a cure for cancer. Awards The Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progr ...
* University of Oxford Department of Chemistry *Donors of molecular research United Devices released the cancer research screensaver under the principle of using spare computing power. The program, which could be set to run continually, used "virtual screening" to find possible interactions between molecules and target proteins, i.e. a drug. These molecules ( ligands) are sent to the host computer's UD Agent. When these molecules dock successfully with a target protein this interaction is scored for further investigation. The research consisted of two phases: * Phase 1 tested over 3 billion drug-like molecules against 12 proteins which were known to be suitable targets for anti-cancer drugs. It used the "THINK" software for the simulation of the molecular interactions. * Phase 2, using the "LigandFit" software developed by
Accelrys BIOVIA is a software company headquartered in the United States, with representation in Europe and Asia. It provides software for chemical, materials and bioscience research for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer packaged goods, aerosp ...
to model interactions, sought to refine the Phase 1 data to produce a more manageable list of drug candidates for testing that would require experimental collaborators, including some from industry.


Human Proteome Folding Project, phase 1

The IBM-sponsored ''Human Proteome Folding Project'' ("HPF"), phase 1, was announced on November 16, 2004 and was completed July 3, 2006. The project operated simultaneously on both grid.org and the IBM's
World Community Grid World Community Grid (WCG) is an effort to create the world's largest volunteer computing platform to tackle scientific research that benefits humanity. Launched on November 16, 2004, with proprietary Grid MP client from United Devices and addi ...
. It made use of the "Rosetta" software to predict the structure of human proteins in order to help predict the function of proteins. This information may someday be used to help cure a variety of diseases and genetic defects. According to an announcement on the grid.org forums, after the HPF1 project was completed it was left to continue running on grid.org until August 9, 2006. During that time, members whose computers were configured to run this project got new work and spent computing resources calculating a result, but the result was returned to grid.org for points only—it was not used for scientific research. The status of the Human Proteome Folding Project caused some discussion on the grid.org forums. Most members wanted to see all available computing power directed toward the still-active cancer project, but UD representative Robby Brewer asserted that "some
sers Sers may refer to: * Sers, Armenia * Sers, Charente, France * Sers, Hautes-Pyrénées, France * Sers, Tunisia Sers, also Le Sers or Es Sers, is a town and commune in the Kef Governorate, Tunisia. It is located by road southeast of El Kef. As of ...
like the screensaver". As noted above, in the end the redundant HPF1 work on grid.org was halted.


Smallpox Project

The ''Smallpox Research Grid'' was a part of United Devices "Patriot Grid" initiative to fight biological terrorism. This project helped analyze potential drug candidates for a medical therapy in the fight against smallpox virus. It made use of the "LigandFit" software (that had already been used by phase 2 of the Cancer Research project), but with a specialized set of target molecules that targeted the smallpox virus. The partners of the project included University of Oxford, the University of Western Ontario, Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, Essex University,
Evotec OAI Evotec SE is a publicly listed drug discovery and development company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company operates globally, largely through external alliances with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic institutions, ...
,
Accelrys BIOVIA is a software company headquartered in the United States, with representation in Europe and Asia. It provides software for chemical, materials and bioscience research for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer packaged goods, aerosp ...
, and IBM. The
World Community Grid World Community Grid (WCG) is an effort to create the world's largest volunteer computing platform to tackle scientific research that benefits humanity. Launched on November 16, 2004, with proprietary Grid MP client from United Devices and addi ...
largely began because of the success of this project.


Anthrax Project

The ''Anthrax Research Project'' was a part of the United Devices "Patriot Grid" initiative to fight biological terrorism. It made use of the "LigandFit" software (that had already been used by phase 2 of the Cancer Research project), but with a specialized set of target molecules that targeted the advanced stages of
anthrax Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Bacillus anthracis''. It can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. Symptom onset occurs between one day and more than two months after the infection is contracted. The s ...
bacterial infection. The project was operated from January 22, 2002 until February 14, 2002 and ended after a total of 3.57 billion molecules had finished screening. The results of the research project were transmitted to biological scientists in order to finish the screening of the computational simulations. The partners of the project included Oxford University.


HMMER Project

The HMMER Genetic Research project made use of the
Hidden Markov model A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process — call it X — with unobservable ("''hidden''") states. As part of the definition, HMM requires that there be an ob ...
to search for patterns in genetic DNA sequences.


Webload Project

The ''Web Performance Testing'' project was operated as a commercial opportunity with select
web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web ...
providers in order to help them test the scalability of their server infrastructures under periods of high-demand.


Open source grid community

In November 2007, grid.org was repositioned by
Univa Univa was a software company that developed workload management and cloud management products for compute-intensive applications in the data center and across public, private, and hybrid clouds, before being acquired by Altair Engineering in Septe ...
as a community to allow users to interact and discuss open source cluster and grid related topics. It allowed users to download, get support for, contribute to, and report issues about the open source Globus Toolkit based products offered by Univa. Over 100,000 unique visitors were reported in 2008. Around mid 2010 it redirected to Unicluster.org (a Univa product) and by 2012 it redirected to Univa's main site.


See also

*
List of volunteer computing projects This is a comprehensive list of volunteer computing projects; a type of distributed computing where volunteers donate computing time to specific causes. The donated computing power comes from idle CPUs and GPUs in personal computers, video gam ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grid.Org Distributed computing projects Computing websites Internet properties established in 2001 Research projects Internet properties disestablished in 2007