Thread: Folding@home

I guess this has been around for a few years but I just heard of it today. This was taken from their web site

"Our goal: to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases
What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project -- people from through out the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer makes the project closer to our goals.

Folding@Home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems thousands to millions of times more challenging than previously achieved."

So instead of building a supercomputer they utilize other peoples computers to go through the calculations, testing, and measuring. So far from what I read they are not only utilizing home computers but also some PS3 (gaming console) users have downloaded it to their machine to work when they are not on.

I would suggest that anyone interested read about it before you download their program to participate. To me It makes sense to help out. So far it has been running in the background and not cause my cpu to slow down. I think it only uses any unused part of your processor while you are on.

If people are interested they have an option to create a team. Meaning they keep track of how many your members have completed and post the top teams. You don't really win anything. Naturally our team name would be this site.

Just thought I would share it with you. here is the site http://folding.stanford.edu/ this if for the teams http://folding.stanford.edu/stats.html

Take care
Chris

Forgive me for being dense but....what??

FWIW, the problem with these things is that they cause your CPU to be constantly loaded. The task is low priority so you won't notice too much, but your computer will not enter low power states.

In other words, when you are running this program, your computer uses a significant amount of energy more than if you wouldn't.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a worthy initiative, but you should realize that it is not free for you - the participant.

Can someone explain this to me? You guys are talking over my head!

I think these guys have made some software that runs some sort of calculations related to protein folding. They don't have enough of their own computers to run all the scenarios they want to in the time they have, so they're asking if the ordinary punter wouldn't mind if they borrowed your home computer to help them out a bit. I guess the software sends any results back to stanford via your web connection?

Didn't they have something similar to this for SETI or some such?

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

I think these guys have made some software that runs some sort of calculations related to protein folding. They don't have enough of their own computers to run all the scenarios they want to in the time they have, so they're asking if the ordinary punter wouldn't mind if they borrowed your home computer to help them out a bit. I guess the software sends any results back to stanford via your web connection?

Didn't they have something similar to this for SETI or some such?

James.

Thank you sir. that helps, but it seems to me that you would be opening up your computer and yourself to all sorts of possible chicanery!

Originally Posted by JMS

Thank you sir. that helps, but it seems to me that you would be opening up your computer and yourself to all sorts of possible chicanery!

You'd certainly have to trust the software you download onto your computer. But I was just guessing about the web connection, although I can't really see any other way to send the results back, at least no other way that doesn't inconvenience you.

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

You'd certainly have to trust the software you download onto your computer. But I was just guessing about the web connection, although I can't really see any other way to send the results back, at least no other way that doesn't inconvenience you.

James.

So far the software is ok. The firewall I have is sensitive and will temporally stop and report anything shady going on, waiting for my approval (even on programs running in the background, including microsoft programs). I think it just downloads a problem (not sure what to call it) and your computer works on it until it has figured it out or gone through every possible scenario. Once your computer is finished then it send the results back to stan and then it downloads another.

I read that Seti bombed because it had too many problems with the software

I am not sure about hibernation or your computer going into low power consumption because I don't use it. My computer is either on or off. I think last time I used the energy calculators provided by my local power company my computer used hardly anything and didn't cost an arm or a leg must less than a eye to operate a month (but then all computers are different) But your processor will always run at 99-100 percent when you have the program turned on because the program is using the left over parts of the processor that you don't use to run its tests.
Here is a pic of the program


This is an better explanation of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

Anyway I thought it was a neat thing and just wanted to share it with you guys.

Off or on is not the issue.
Even when your computer is running normally, the CPU (any modern CPU) will go into a low power state when your computer is not doing anything. Ditto for the graphics card.

So even though you are using your computer for things like surfing, it uses much less power than when you are running a 3D game or something like folding@home in the background.

If you have varibale speed fans you can even hear it. As soon as the CPU or the video driver becomes active for longer times, the chips will start to heat and the vari speed fans will start whirring.