Geeks United: 75,000 PCs hooked up to cure disease

French scientists harnessed the power of 10 million computing hours by hooking up 75,000 PCs across the Internet. Their work may help find a cure for muscular dystrophy.

The first French initiative to harness shared computing power for scientific research has been a roaring success, according to its organisers, and a second event is to be organised next year.

The Decryptathon project linked up thousands of PCs across the Internet with a view to enabling complex scientific calculations. More than 180,000 PC owners signed up to take part, and 75,000 of these were eventually used, said the organisers -- IBM and the French muscular dystrophy association, AFM.

"The take-up went far beyond what we hoped for," said Bruno Desbuleux, head of operations for AFM. He said the enthusiasm meant there will be a second Decryptathon session in 2003. The reason that some PCs were not used, said Desbuleux, was that many were business PCs performing administrative roles. "For reasons of Internet security none of those ended up being used," he said. "But such is the success of the first operation that we will try to secure them and use them in future."

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News source: ZDNet UK