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Power Sleep: you can donate while sleeping

Posted March. 14, 2014 00:47,   

한국어

Mr. Kim, a 40-year-old who works at a large company, turned on an app called “Power Sleep” before going to bed at 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday and set an alarm at 6 a.m. next morning.

While he was sleeping for six hours and 30 minutes, the CPU power of his smartphone was used to operate the supercloud computer of a research team led by Dr. Thomas Rattei, professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Vienna. The supercloud computer is used to analyze the structure of proteins related to diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Kim donated the spare processing power of his smartphone for the research of incurable diseases.

Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday that the app was developed to donate the unused processing power of numerous smartphones while people sleep to help the research supercomputer operate faster, as part of its creating shared value (CSV) efforts.

“We developed Power Sleep for meaningful social contribution, not just for spending money,” a Samsung Electronics source said, adding, “When the app is turned on, you can simply donate without taking extra action or paying expenses.”

Samsung Electronics chose Professor Rattei’s team because he was studying both information technology and bioengineering, an area where the company was interested. In addition, it considered the fact that the University of Vienna also had a technology that can use the processing power of computers to run a supercloud computer.

The app surpassed 100,000 downloads after its release on Feb. 14. A video clip on the app on YouTube also had more than 360,000 views. Samsung Electronics expects the app would spread more after the World Sleep Day on March 14.