branjo
Prince
Joined: 05 Jan 2006
Posts: 746
Location: Slovakia
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 Posted: Fri May 17, 2013 1:46 pm Post subject: WCG / Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2 Nearing Completion |
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The first ever WCG project, HPF(2) is to finish (24 days remaining). Here are the reasons http://bonneaulab.bio.nyu.edu/wcg/thread_2013_05_16.html . The main: Sequester 
| Quote: | In relative terms, $37 million is 0.1% of the US National Institute of Health (NIH) annual budget, or the equivalent to 90 NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01) grants (i.e. main funding vehicle for many university labs). If you have been following the US Congressional budget news, you will know that budget cuts have been implemented which target US research funding and the NIH announced nearly 1000 R01 grants will not be funded due to the “sequester.” (commentary on the subject) These cuts are not only destructive to research but to the economy as a whole; the rate of return of publicly funded research is estimated at 25% to 40% a year (see nih_research_benefits). So for every $1 put into research, $1.40 is returned to the economy.
We realize we are preaching to the choir on this one; people who volunteer their computer time to World Community Grid have already made a conscious choice to support basic research, and they understand better than most the benefits of basic research. You have all contributed far more than what was asked of you, BUT if you would like to do more, contact your elected officials (worldwide!) and tell them you support basic research funding. |
37 million USD worth of volunteer computing for HPF2?
| Quote: | We do a lot of calculations in the lab to try to capture what is happening at the level of protein structure and function but sometimes we do “back of the envelope” calculations just for fun. For instance, a new postdoctoral fellow (“post-doc”) joined our lab a few years ago and while we were explaining the Human Proteome Folding Project to him he blurted out:
“That's a lot of computation! How much would that cost on the cloud?!?”
The “cloud” he was referring to, of course, was the resizable web service grid offered by companies like Google, Amazon, or IBM. Current prices per cpu hour for cloud computing are decreasing rapidly, and 3.5 cents is a reasonable estimate to use. We plugged this value into our calculation and we got a very large number.
122,901 cpu years * 365 days/year * 24 hours/day * .035 dollars/cpu hour = $37,681,446
Not to get too carried away with our estimate, but this number really speaks to the power of volunteer computing. If one person, lab or institution needed to provide $37 million in order to run this project, it would have never gotten off the ground. Distributing the work in little bits to volunteers across the world, it was possible. We are very proud of this number because it represents what can happen when individuals come together under the banner of scientific research. We are also glad we did not get this bill in the mail. Deepest thanks go to all of the volunteers on World Community Grid for supporting the Human Proteome Folding project. |
Sad reality 
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,33433
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,35127
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,35130
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