Dedicate unused processing power to science using Samsung’s new app

When you are sleeping, chances are you have plugged your phone in to charge for the night. However since you are sleeping, it also means that your phone is not being used, meaning that there is a lot of unused processing power. But what if you could “share” that processing power in the name of science? Would that be something you might be interested in? If you are, perhaps you might be interested in downloading a new app by Samsung called Power Sleep. 

Samsung has decided to take advantage of unused processing power, and allow the user to dedicate it to science. Samsung announced that they were collaborating with Cheil Worldwide, and the result of this collaboration is the new Samsung alarm app, called “Power Sleep.” The app essentially uses unused CPU cycles to create a “supercloud computer” which is accessible to researchers all over the world. The app only works in the background while the user is asleep, and the cycles are used to compute data that is under 1 MB. The data is then collated by researchers at the University of Vienna, and turned into an open-source protein-calculation database that can be used to find a cure for diseases like Alzheimer’s.