Communications of the ACM
Ethical Supercomputing
Socially conscious organizations can turn to a non-profit supercomputing grid service, Charity Engine, for extra compute cycles.
The U.K.-based grid sells computational power to clients, similar to the way a user would rent cloud computing cycles. A volunteer computing grid, Charity Engine offers software for participants to download on their personal computers (PCs) and make them available to the grid service.
Former software developer Mark McAndrew founded Charity Engine in 2011. The organization plans to donate half of its proceeds to select charities, and its current list includes Amnesty International, Medecins Sans Frontieres MSF (Doctors Without Borders) WaterAid, Oxfam, Sightsavers, War on Want, CARE International, ActionAid, and Practical Action.
The other half of the money collected from clients will be randomly distributed to PC donors. Charity Engine is available for applications that are amenable to distribution across a set of loosely coupled computers, as long as the initiative is a socially conscious project.
From HPC Wire
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc. 
, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Comments
Anonymous
The CE grid is open to any commercial and industrial applications, not just those with a humanitarian purpose.
All the profits go to charity anyway, so everything it does has a humanitarian purpose by default.
So long as the work is not unethical (the charities have final say), anyone is welcome to use it.
Typical cost is 1c per average CPU/hr.
Rgds,
Mark McA, CEO
Displaying 1 comment