One of the best-known examples of the power of the Internet and peer-to-peer computing model was the SETI@Home project, which harnessed the computational power of over a million personal computers worldwide. I’ve often thought it would be just a matter of time before medical peer-to-peer projects like Seti@Home were born.

Voila! The FightAIDSatHome takes a page from the computational successes of Seti@Home project. Using the Internet and peer-to-peer computing model, the projects’ PC client software helps generate and test millions of candidate drug compounds against detailed models of evolving AIDS viruses, a task which proved impossible with even the most powerful of supercomputers.

No mention of Linux PC-client software as of yet, but I’m willing to bet the project has received many requests from sources worldwide. Though no mention of future Linux client software appears on any of the project web pages, a project to port the M$ Windows-based client software could already be in the works.

The project was recently featured in InfoWorld, which reported that over 25,810 PCs are contributing CPU computational power to the project.