Page 219 -

The Greening of IT
184 How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

™
World Community Grid —A Green IT Grid for Good

Grid computing was first mentioned in Chapter 6, “A Most-Significant
Step—‘Virtualizing’ Your IT Systems,” as the ultimate in the use of server
virtualization for green IT. Grid computing and its offshoot, cloud comput-
ing, are discussed in detail in Appendix B, “Green IT and Cloud
Computing.” In this case study, we examine the use of a global grid comput-
ing system used for addressing environmental concerns. Thus, this case study
is the use of green IT to help solve environmental problems, or, in other
words, to hit two green birds with one stone!
IBM’s World Community Grid uses idle computer power to address world
hunger, disease, environmental problems, and more. Rising costs of food and
oil put heavy pressure on consumers around the world and severely strain
governments’ capability to provide relief. The author’s laptop is one of the
more than one million PCs in this grid, so I can tell you from first-hand
experience that this is an interesting way for anyone to be involved in green
IT with the added benefit of addressing global environmental and health
concerns. When this paragraph was written in September 2008, the World ptg
Community Grid project running in the background on the author’s laptop
was an application on research to fight AIDS, sponsored by The Scripps
Research Institute. To learn more and join, visit the Web site:
http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp.
The global food crisis is particularly acute in Asia, where the World Bank
estimates demand for food will double by 2030, forcing as many as 100 mil-
lion people deeper into poverty. The crisis is real, as is the need to develop
workable, real-world solutions. The World Community Grid uses the power
of idle computers around the world to perform humanitarian research that
wouldn’t otherwise be possible because of the high cost of the required com-
puting power. More than one million participants worldwide—including
more than 95,000 IBMers—are plugged into the World Community Grid.
Their idle PCs are helping researchers battle cancer, analyze human proteome
folding, compare genomes, fight AIDS and muscular dystrophy, and much
more.
Researchers from the University of Washington and IBM are working
together to harness the 167-teraflops of grid computing power in a new ini-
tiative, Nutritious Rice for the World. The project will study rice at the
atomic level and assess traditional cross-breeding techniques to help farmers
around the world breed better rice strains with higher crop yields and
research greater disease and pest resistance. According to Dr. Ram