Folding@Home what is it?

[Simons]

Hello guys,

 

So from what I've understood, you basically ''sign up'' for a group and then you let i.e. Stanford use your computers power to their computing project. You get points per project, but what can you use those points for?

Im just wondering, is it a vulenteer project, where you give you electricity to them etc ?

[napsterlove]

They utilise your processing power to fold proteins which allow them to study what happens when proteins fold. You can't do anything with the points except contribute them towards a team (which is a group of people folding together). This all aids medical science as we don't know what happens when proteins fold. There's loads of information on their website http://folding.stanford.edu/

[GlassBomb]

You can read up on it here.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

The TL;DR version is that you use your computers CPU/GPU to 'fold' proteins and such. Aiding to the research for Alzheimers, Cancer, etc.

The points is pretty much only there to show you and others how much you have given for the cause. So yes, it is a volunteer project.

[Simons]

Alright just wanted to know abit more about this, as I keep seeing it around

[tobben]

@Simons When you say it like you do, it sounds like you are actually

handing over the control of your computer to Stanford , you can: 

stop/pause/quit whenever you like, you are in full control. 

 

You basically just run some software on your computer that you 

can run whenever you decide you want to(just meet the deadline),

the folding client will download, work through, then upload your work

in pieces referred to as wu's(work units) 

 

The result is a giant network of computers that while individually 

have measly power at their disposal, collectively they make up a

super computer of sorts.. for folding specifically it's about medical

research, protein folding. To understand how it works and the diseases

miss-folding can lead to, it's pretty awesome. 

[Simons]

It kinda sounded stupid the way, I stated it. But I just wanted to know really what it was about, as I keep hearing about it.

[Opcode]

Reading the official homepage explains it in short.

 

Help Stanford University scientists studying Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers by simply running a piece of software on your computer.

 

The problems we are trying to solve require so many calculations, we ask people to donate their unused computer power to crunch some of the numbers

 

In just 5 minutes ...

 

Add your computer to over 167,000 others around the world outputting 43,000 teraflops of computing power to form the world's largest distributed supercomputer.