Jan 05, 2005 - Claremont, Calif. -

Sun Microsystems co-founder and CEO Scott NcNealy's now-famous statement "the network is the computer" was never more true than it is today -- and evidence of it can be found on some of the computers at Harvey Mudd College, thanks in part to the work of an HMC alumnus and a staff member.

The college is a leading participant in an innovative project called World Community Grid that allows unused central processing unit (CPU) cycles on computers throughout the world to work on large computational projects via the Internet. Because of this, these projects, which have important humanitarian benefits, can be completed in much less time and at a lower cost.

Since joining the World Community Grid on Nov. 16 of last year, HMC computers have delivered more than three years' worth of computational time to the grid's current project. This ranks the college among the top 40 teams in the world in the volume of work it has contributed. HMC's involvement in the project was the idea of Andy Davenport, network manager in the college's Computing and Information Services Department.

"I learned about the project the day before it was rolled out," Davenport said. "When I saw the humanitarian benefits it offered, I knew we should get involved." The software is installed on many of the Windows-based PCs in the labs across campus.

The software works in the background or like a screensaver when the computer is unattended. When available, the computer sends a message to the grid, essentially saying, "My CPU is available. Give me a problem to work on." Using advanced encryption to avoid security issues, the problem and its results are transmitted back and forth via the Internet.

The current project (see example, above) involves human proteome folding, a complex process that scientists are seeking to understand. The human genome's collection of proteins (the proteome, which numbers around 30,000) goes through a folding process that determines their final shape and how they interact with other proteins (e.g., proteins of a certain shape bind together to form muscle fiber). Researchers are seeking to understand this process and why diseases interfere with it.

The World Community Grid is a project sponsored in large part by IBM Corporation, which provides hardware, software, technical services, hosting, maintenance and support. Another partner in the project is United Devices, a market leader in enterprise grid solutions for businesses of all sizes. It developed the grid software platform that enables World Community Grid to operate.

HMC alumnus Jeff Lawson '99 is senior software architect at United Devices in Austin, Texas, and guides the technical direction of the product and the design and implemention of its software. United Devices' grid software has been instrumental in numerous other community projects that include research on cancer and the development of anthrax and smallpox vaccines.

"While I was a student at Harvey Mudd College," Lawson said, "from my dorm room I helped to start the non-profit organization distributed.net with the similar goals of doing large-scale distributed computing. I designed and implemented much of the the client and server code that formed the basis of distributed.net, which continues to operate today (and I continue to maintain in my free time after work)."

After graduation, Lawson went to work for Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., but left after 14 months to join United Devices, along with other members of the distributed.net team. "My work at United Devices builds on the distributed computing experience that I gained doing distributed.net. Naturally, Professor [Robert] Keller's Parallel Programming course [in the Computer Science Department] has since been invaluable, too."

For more information:

World Community Grid: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

United Devices: http://www.ud.com/

distributed.net: http://www.distributed.net/