F@H?

[verydogesuchwow]

Ok, I'm sure this is a stupid question.. but what on Earth is F@H/folding at home??

I've seen it on many forums and to be honest, it doesn't make much sense lol

[Kobathor]

supposedly it helps cure cancer so

If you trust Stanford Uni to use your computer's horsepower, go ahead.

 

https://folding.stanford.edu/

[TheRandomness]

Stanford Uni uses the combined power of thousands of computers to simulate protein folding and this folding helps finds cures for lots of things.

[Godlygamer23]

The idea behind Folding@home and similar BOINC projects is to run simulations on your computer that promote an understanding of protein folding. Many diseases, including cancer, are caused by protein misfolding, which is when protein chains don't assemble properly. By understanding protein folding more, it allows us to create things like drugs, additional therapies, etc to help people with Alzheimers, ALS, cancers, etc.

[Imakuni]

2 hours ago, verydogesuchwow said:

Ok, I'm sure this is a stupid question.. but what on Earth is F@H/folding at home??

I've seen it on many forums and to be honest, it doesn't make much sense lol

Here's how it works: your PC has MUCH more compute power than your average Joe is ever going to use. On the other hand, researchers from all over the globe need much more compute power than what's available. F@H (and BOINC) aims to fix that, by using regular people's idle compute power to help scientists do their job, without costing an insane amount of money.

 

On the particular case of F@H, the target is protein folding for some diseases.