Worldwide, 690,000 help computer effort

More than 690,000 people worldwide with more than a million computers are donating computer power to research organizations through the Open Infrastructure for Network Computing project of the University of California, Berkeley.

Top recipients include:

• The original distributed computing project, seti@home, searches for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, with nearly 953,000 computers donating power.

• Einstein@home with the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is getting help from 236,000 computers in its search for pulsars.

• Climateprediction.net out of Oxford University, where scientists are trying to forecast world climate change, has more than 165,000 computers contributing power through the Berkeley project.

• Rosetta@home, with nearly 128,000 computers online, seeks to unlock the clues to protein structures within DNA with hopes of applying the knowledge to disease cures.

• Predictor@home, with nearly 123,000 computers donating time, is a protein-structure-prediction project with a focus on pharmaceutical research.

Google Compute is a toolbar tool offered by the Internet search company to let people donate idle computer time to worthwhile projects selected by Google.

On the Berkeley project Web site, users can sign up for a project they want to help, and the Berkeley software is available to any scientific researcher who wants it. The Berkeley group tracks 21 organizations.