Eye On CameraWare -- feature

Lifesaving Shareware

Written by: Esmerelda Bonbon

A new project launched is designed to harness the spare processing power of personal computers to fight cancer.

The project is the first element of Intel Corp.'s Philanthropic Peer-to-Peer Program, which takes the theory behind Napster and applies it to science. Instead of swapping music, individual users will share processing power.

Organizers expect as many as 6 million people to participate by installing a free program advertisement and letting it run as a screen saver or while they use other programs. The computers linked processing power will perform like a supercomputer to calculate answers to researchers questions. An opportunity to turn your screen saver into a life saver. Organizers say the machines' combined processing powers will be 10 times more powerful than existing supercomputers. With a price tag of $1 million, the program is about 100 times cheaper than existing supercomputers. The program was developed to enable the easy ability to ask questions and hopefully answer questions that people have never considered attacking because the computing requirements were outside the realm of possibilities. The program is designed to analyze how billions of small molecules interact with proteins. One protein that is analyzed by the program has been identified as critical in the growth of leukemia. A small molecule that shuts down its growth could lead to a treatment. Depending on how many people participate, the time required to develop new drugs could be cut to as little as five years from the current 12 years. All information transmitted to and from the program is encrypted and has a digital signature to ensure no bogus commands or bad data are processed on users' computers.

If you would like to find out more information or to participate in this program: http://www.intel.com/cure/