Folding@home
Posted: 31 Mar 2012, 05:19
For the people who have not heard about this giant project that has been happening for years now, Folding@Home was developed @ Stanford University in the Pande Lab and was released on October 1, 2000.
im to lazy to rewrite or any of that so ill be copy pasting. all FAQ of Folding@Home can be found Here
What is Folding@Home?
Folding@home is a distributed computing project, that very simply stated, studies protein folding and misfolding. Protein folding is explained in more detail in the scientific background section. Findout more about Proteins
What is distributed computing?
Distributed Computing is a method of computer processing in which different parts of a program, or different portions of data, are processing simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network or through the Internet.
Why not just use a supercomputer?
Modern supercomputers are essentially clusters of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. The speed of these processors is comparable to (and often slower than) those found in PCs! Thus, if an algorithm (like ours) does not need the fast networking, it will run just as fast on a supercluster as a supercomputer. However, our application needs not the hundreds of processors found in modern supercomputers, but hundreds of thousands of processors. Hence, the calculations performed on Folding@home would not be possible by any other means! Moreover, even if we were given exclusive access to all of the supercomputers in the world, we would still have fewer computing cycles than we do with the Folding@home cluster! This is possible since PC processors are now very fast and there are hundreds of millions of PCs sitting idle in the world.
This is where we come in...random people around the world, now i know many of you do not turn off their computers or put them to sleep, you turn off the monitor and go about your business.
just having this run in the background, this will not lag you in anything you want to do on your computer, the program is VERY good at throttling itself down using VERY minimal resources when you have higher priorities. Its also great at using 100% resources when you are not using the computer.
why not help the world on this project on the road to finding cures and treatments for diseases.
for every protein(workunit) finished you gain points in which the you actually get pretty kool certificates saying you having "_____ Points" my last one i got
all info can be found Folding@Home and i encourage everyone to start doing this. as its a great way to help the world with out actually doing anything.
i have 2 machines running 24/7 in my appartment, and 1 machine when im not traveling, all using very little power, #1 my Ps3(Sony Supports Folding@Home 100% and actually has their own team), #2 Random mini Desktop, #3 Mobile Desktop.
edited: fixing urls
im to lazy to rewrite or any of that so ill be copy pasting. all FAQ of Folding@Home can be found Here
What is Folding@Home?
Folding@home is a distributed computing project, that very simply stated, studies protein folding and misfolding. Protein folding is explained in more detail in the scientific background section. Findout more about Proteins
What is distributed computing?
Distributed Computing is a method of computer processing in which different parts of a program, or different portions of data, are processing simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network or through the Internet.
Why not just use a supercomputer?
Modern supercomputers are essentially clusters of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. The speed of these processors is comparable to (and often slower than) those found in PCs! Thus, if an algorithm (like ours) does not need the fast networking, it will run just as fast on a supercluster as a supercomputer. However, our application needs not the hundreds of processors found in modern supercomputers, but hundreds of thousands of processors. Hence, the calculations performed on Folding@home would not be possible by any other means! Moreover, even if we were given exclusive access to all of the supercomputers in the world, we would still have fewer computing cycles than we do with the Folding@home cluster! This is possible since PC processors are now very fast and there are hundreds of millions of PCs sitting idle in the world.
This is where we come in...random people around the world, now i know many of you do not turn off their computers or put them to sleep, you turn off the monitor and go about your business.
just having this run in the background, this will not lag you in anything you want to do on your computer, the program is VERY good at throttling itself down using VERY minimal resources when you have higher priorities. Its also great at using 100% resources when you are not using the computer.
why not help the world on this project on the road to finding cures and treatments for diseases.
for every protein(workunit) finished you gain points in which the you actually get pretty kool certificates saying you having "_____ Points" my last one i got
all info can be found Folding@Home and i encourage everyone to start doing this. as its a great way to help the world with out actually doing anything.
i have 2 machines running 24/7 in my appartment, and 1 machine when im not traveling, all using very little power, #1 my Ps3(Sony Supports Folding@Home 100% and actually has their own team), #2 Random mini Desktop, #3 Mobile Desktop.
edited: fixing urls