Trouvé par hasard cette pub sur une page Fesse bouc :
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/the-charity-engineUn nouveau groupe de projets début 2011 ?
The Charity Engine
http://www.charity-engine.org/The Charity Engine™ is about to launch the fastest, cheapest, greenest - and most ethical - computing platform anywhere in the world.
How It Works
The Charity Engine™ is a volunteer computing network with a crucial difference; the public joins not because they support any particular science project, but rather because they are supporting top international charities - and also because, every so often, one volunteer wins a $1m prize. As you can probably imagine, these are very powerful incentives to participate.
Our testbed Facebook group proves the point, with over 110,000 followers from over 120 countries, growing at ~1000 per day. With the help of our charity partners to publicise the launch, these numbers will only grow. The result will be the world’s most popular volunteer grid by a huge margin - in effect, a worldwide computer - capable of absolutely transforming scientific research and industrial productivity. (Just 1% of the Internet would be more powerful than every supercomputer on Earth combined.)
To begin with, The Charity Engine™ will be based on BOINC, the de facto industry standard software for volunteer computing. The director of BOINC, Prof David Anderson, is our technical consultant and Matt Blumberg and his team (GridRepublic, Progress Thru Processors) are coding the back-end. We have secured all the funding required to launch, ETA is March 2011.
Obviously, the business must have a revenue stream to generate the charity donations, the prize fund and a return for the shareholders. This will come from science and industry renting processing time on the ‘global grid’ for an incredibly cheap rate; just 1-2 cents per average CPU/hour (or even less). This is an order of magnitude cost saving compared to any other form of computing - and effectively untouchable. Just powering a CPU costs more than 2c per hour.
With this ingenious model, The Charity Engine™ completely solves the one problem that prevents most researchers from being able to use volunteer computing: the risk of not finding enough volunteers. Not every project can capture the public’s imagination, and scientists have better things to do than create advertising campaigns. Now, for the first time ever, that donated computing time can be guaranteed, booked in advance and purchased like any other commodity. No advertising, no time-wasting, no risk.
The Unexpected Bonus
Not only can The Charity Engine™ be the fastest and cheapest form of computing in the world, but also the greenest. We call this innovation “Winter-puting” - and it completely solves the problem of energy costs.
Firstly, we don’t stress the components (our volunteer’s PCs). A typical under-used CPU is only 2% active but still using 60W, which is ridiculously inefficient. It can cruise at 60% activity for just another 4W, so that is our default setting. No excessive heat, no noisy fans, no surprise bills - and the grid gains a powerful computing node for less power than charging an iPhone.
But we can do even better…
Supercomputers and data-centres have one problem they cannot escape: heat. Fortunately for us, it’s always cold somewhere - and everywhere is cooler at night. The Charity Engine™ will therefore give priority to PCs in cold places, especially where the extra heat is actually a welcome bonus. By effectively offsetting the majority of its already-low carbon costs, The Charity Engine™ really will be the most eco-friendly supercomputer on the planet.
Leave No Science Behind
There will always be worthy projects with huge computing needs but no money (just like most existing BOINC networks), so 5%-10% of the global grid will be permanently reserved for “pure, poor science” and overseen by an independent advisory board. The first two agreed members of the board are Prof David Anderson and Prof Stephen Wolfram, as they are prominent in the fields of computing and mathematics respectively. Fundamental physics, molecular biology, materials science, genetics and other key areas will also be well-represented.
Finally, The Charity Engine™ will be run according to the famously rigorous ethical policy of the Co-operative Bank. If the Internet is about to become the worldwide computer, let’s do some good with it.
Mark McAndrew CEO