IBM has offered its support to AIDS research by joining the World Community Grid, a philanthropic technology initiative made up of a global community of computer users who donate free time on their personal computers.
The World Community Grid, launched in November 2004, invites individuals and businesses, foundations, universities and non-profit organisations to download the World Community Grid free software and register to become volunteers.
The World Community Grid will be the first virtual supercomputer devoted specifically to AIDS research. To date, about 100 000 people are using the World Community Grid on more than 165 000 devices, IBM says in a statement.
Grid computing is a rapidly emerging technology that can bring together the collective power of millions of individual computers, to create a giant virtual system with massive computing power. IBM has signed up its Blue Gene supercomputer to the initiative, the company says.
"AIDS is the most devastating epidemic of our time. Its growing impact on the developing nations of the world is both tragic and destabilising," says Dave Botha, country marketing executive for IBM SA.
"South Africa is one of numerous developing countries that is affected by the pandemic.
"Through the World Community Grid, individuals on all parts of the globe can participate in helping develop effective, inexpensive and robust therapies against HIV and potentially reverse the downward health and economic impacts of this epidemic.
"The new World Community Grid project will run millions upon millions of docking computations to evaluate potential interactions between compounds and mutant viral protein," says Botha.
"We are devoting the best infrastructure we have to fight the disease and we will be using the Blue Gene power computer for the research."
World Community Grid will host its second major Internet-based project, FightAIDS@Home, a research project dedicated to finding new therapeutic approaches that are effective in the treatment of AIDS.
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