Cancer Computer uses decommissioned servers to fight cancer and coronavirus.

 

Large companies regularly update their servers to get more computing power and reduce maintenance costs. The old hardware is usually sent for recycling or is just thrown away but there are exceptions to these scenarios.

For example, the Canadian non-profit Cancer Computer suggests using such equipment for medical research.

The organization was founded 5 years ago and since then has accumulated 14,300 processor cores, which gives it a computing system equal to an average university cluster in the United States or Canada in terms of performance. In most cases, Cancer Computer receives equipment from corporate partners who wish to facilitate research.

As the name suggests, Cancer Computer's main goal is to fight cancer. High-performance computing is extremely important in cancer research. However, the Canadian organization is helping to combat other dangerous diseases as well as supporting research in neuroscience through the Rosetta @ Home project.

Now, Cancer Computer has joined the global fight against COVID-19. The organization has already sent all available computing power to assist researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle to seek treatment for coronavirus.

The majority of servers obtained by Cancer Computer over five years of existence are built on Intel processors, but there are also a few dozen servers based on AMD processors and systems with GPU accelerators. According to Cancer Computer’s representatives, they would like to get more systems on AMD, as they have shown their high efficiency in some biological calculations.

At the moment, Cancer Computer has most of its computing power in the institutions that act as liaisons between commercial organizations and researchers. These are various universities and institutes in Canada and the USA. Another part of the donated servers is located on regular hosting and private sites, and in the future, the organization plans to expand its presence in commercial data centers.

As a result, researchers can gain access to a particular amount of computing power. In addition, Cancer Computer helps reduce e-waste. In today’s world more and more organizations understand the importance of extending the life of computing systems, and support initiatives like Cancer Computer.

 

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