Friday, December 12, 2008

IBM links PCs worldwide for Harvard’s solar cell research

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

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In an effort to discover new organic materials with which to create more efficient photovoltaics, Harvard University has partnered with IBM Corp. and its World Community Grid to enlist the processing power of PC users worldwide.

The Harvard research project will look to identify organic materials capable of being used in low-cost, high efficiency photovoltaics. While the current standard in solar power — silicon — is about 20 percent efficient and costs about $3 per watt, Harvard researchers, as well as many industry insiders, believe some organic compounds can produce better yields, as well as provide a flexibility unattainable with rigid materials such as silicon.

In order to identify appropriate compounds, the group has developed a battery of computations aimed at different properties of potential crystal molecules, but each process could take up to 100 days of computational time to examine under standard procedures. As a way to speed the process, the Harvard researchers will use the World Community Grid, a humanitarian “virtual grid” launched by Big Blue in 2004 and aimed at using the idle processing power of volunteer personal computers worldwide.

“We bundle up all the extra energy of a million devices and apply them to humanitarian research efforts,” said Robin Milner, vice president of global communication initiatives at IBM, who is one of more than 100,000 IBMers that have volunteered their own work stations to the effort.

Using the community grid, project organizers at Harvard will be able to complete in two years what would have taken 22 years on an enterprise server, according to Alan Aspuru-Guzik, the principal investigator and a professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

While Harvard’s own supercomputer could have done the job, the computing capacity of the world grid exceeds the potential of the school’s on-campus resources.

“Even if we used the entire machine at Harvard, it would take about the same amount of time,” said Roel Sanchez, a post-doctoral scientist with the project.

In addition, he said, the group wants to let the world know about its research. “Getting the community involved in what we are doing is also a great aspect of using the World Community Grid,” Sanchez said.

The World Community Grid is growing constantly and currently includes 413,000 members, with access to the spare computing power of more than 1 million computers. The grid is currently running six projects, including Harvard’s organic solar compound search, and in 2009 officials expect to add four more.

For projects to get onto the grid, they must be scientific endeavors aimed at the benefit of humanity, and are not for IBM’s use, according to Milner. In addition, the results of such projects will become part of the public domain, she said.