HTC, using the computing power of smartphones, wants to create a supercomputer that will look for answers to the most important problems facing our society, concerning, inter alia, a fight against cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer's disease.
During the MWC 2014 in Barcelona representatives of the manufacturer presented a project based on mobile volunteering - "HTC Power to Give". People who will participate in it will allow unused computing power of their smartphones to capitalize on the work of researchers on the lifestyle diseases.
One million HTC One smartphones, working towards a project via HTC Power To Give, could provide similar processing power to that of one of the world’s 30 supercomputers (one PetaFLOP). This could drastically shorten the research cycles for organizations that would otherwise have to spend years analyzing the same volume of data, potentially bringing forward important discoveries in vital subjects by weeks, months, years or even decades.
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| The conference "HTC Power To Give". Dr. Gianni De Fabritiis photo: Jacek Filipowicz/GSMchoice.com |
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- We’ve often used innovation to bring about change in the mobile industry, but this programme takes our vision one step further - said Cher Wang, chairwoman of HTC. - We’ve been discussing the impact that just one million HTC Power To Give-enabled smartphones could make, however analysts estimate that over 780 million Android phones were shipped in 2013 alone! Imagine the difference we could make to our children’s future if just a fraction of these Android users were able to divert some of their unused processing power to help find answers to the questions that concern us all - Cher Wang added.
How will it work? After downloading the HTC Power To Give app from the Google Play™ store, smartphone owners can select the research programme to which they will divert a proportion of their phone’s processing power. HTC Power To Give will then run while the phone is charging and connected to a WiFi network.
The beta version of HTC Power To Give will be available to download from the Google Play store and will initially be compatible with the HTC One family, HTC Butterfly and HTC Butterfly S. HTC plans to make the app more widely available to other Android smartphone owners in the coming six months as the beta trial progresses.
The project that Peter Chou CEO of HTC told us about in Barcelona, was created in partnership with Dr. David Anderson, Inventor of the Shared Computing Initiative BOINC, University of California, Berkeley, and Fearlessly Frank, Global Brand Consultancy. Will this idea help our civilization to prevail over AIDS, cancer or Alzheimer's? We will not know if we don't join in the action...
Source GSMchoice.com / HTC
