Sell Your Cycles to Science

August 26, 2011

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A Portland startup called CPUusage is offering folks a chance to turn their excess CPU cycles into a public computing grid for scientific research.

Think of it as Airbnb for CPUs.

Harnessing idle computers is not a new idea, but CPUsage's approach is a bit different. The startup offers computers owners a chance to build up points, similar to airline miles or credit card rewards, that can be redeem as gift cards for major restaurants and retailers.

CPUsage’s Cirrus Grid delivers a scalable and high powered Infrastructure-as-a-Service for high throughput and high performance computing. Good for SaaS and PaaS offerings, Cirrus Grid provides access to the raw processing power of thousands of physical nodes and is highly secure and able to run most batch-oriented applications and the libraries they require.

Below is a video featuring CPUusage CEO Jeff Martens:

When it comes to harnessing the power of unused computers, the Condor project out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison is the grandaddy of the them all.

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Nicholas Tatonetti

Assistant Professor
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Hacquard, Kracher, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The barley powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei) pathogen genome is comprised of chunks of sequence that are particularly rich or replete in polymorphisms, according to a study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research. The team sequenced the genomes of two Bgh isolates from Europe, comparing each to the barley powdery mildew reference genome. The newly sequenced isolates each contained distinct combinations of sequence blocks with high or low SNP concentrations — isolate-specific mosaic genomes that point to "exceptionally large standing genetic variation in the Bgh population," study authors say. Meanwhile, their transcriptome sequencing experiments offered a look at genes used by Bgh during attempted infiltration of barley or immunocompromised Arabidopsis.
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Hologic has appointed former Beckman Coulter head Scott Garrett to its board of directors, where he will serve on the corporate development committee.
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An international team has sequenced the genome of the carnivorous bladderwort plant, Utricularia gibba. Their findings suggest that the carnivorous plant has ditched virtually all its non-coding DNA, retaining a set of sequences that's almost exclusively genic. "What that says is that you can have a perfectly good multicellular plant with lots of different cells, organs, tissue types and flowers, and you can do it without the ['junk' DNA]," said co-corresponding author Victor Albert.
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GenomeWebinar: Advances in Single-Cell Genomics: Live Cell RNA and Circulating miRNA Detection

Sponsor: EMD Millipore

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On-demand recording available here.

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