HCC June 2012 update

[PoppaGeek]

HCC June 2012 update

Hello World Community Grid members,

I am happy to announce the June 2012 update to the Help Conquer Cancer project. We are focused on the GPU beta right now, and working to make it ready for production, and consistent across the wide range of supported cards.

In addition to the launch of the HCC/GPU beta, the update describes two new categories of protein crystallization experiments we have started processing on the WCGrid: crystal optimization experiments, and membrane protein crystallization screens. As with the globular protein crystallization screens we have processed since the beginning, these experiments come from the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute. One clever aspect of these experiments is that HWI crystallographers designed them to re-use much of the existing high-throughput pipeline, up to and including processing on the World Community Grid under the HCC project.

Work units from these two sources are being folded into the regular HCC stream. They only constitute a small fraction of the all HCC units processed these last few months, but if you have been contributing to HCC, you have probably already processed one or two.

Thank you to all World Community Grid members for your CPU and now GPU cycles!

Christian A. Cumbaa
Research Associate, Ontario Cancer Institute

[PoppaGeek]

From the pdf

Launch of the GPU Beta

"Beta testing for HCC/GPU began on March 13, 2012. We are delighted by the enthusiastic response to GPU computing from World Community Grid members. We know you are eager to crunch more units, and are working to release the next round as soon as possible.
GPU processing represents an entirely different computational platform than any CPU platform supported by HCC or other World Community Grid projects. The methods to efficiently compute results differ greatly. The code implementing HCC on the GPU is consequently very different from our CPU code, and must be written to perform well on the wide range of graphics cards supported by the project. We are currently examining results from the latest round of beta testing, and are busy tweaking our GPU algorithms to improve the consistency and reliability of the calculations.
We anticipate a large increase in the processing rate of Help Conquer Cancer work units once HCC/GPU switches from beta to production. In preparation for the increased processing rate of the project, we have upgraded our storage hardware, and are busy preparing new work units. We look forward to the successful completion of GPU beta testing."

[Otis11]

Thanks for the update PG!