Folding@home now has access to over 470 petaFLOPS of distributed compute power to research...

[onetheycallEric]

Why it matters: In the wake of the current Covid-19 pandemic, it's important that we all do our part. To that end, it's encouraging to see the PC enthusiast community come together and support such an important effort on behalf of Folding@home and their research into Covid-19.

What started as a call to action from PCMR and Nvidia has resulted in some 400K volunteers joining Folding@home to donate computing resources aimed at studying Covid-19. Before gaining traction within the PC gaming and enthusiast community, Dr. Greg Bowman stated there were around 30K active volunteers folding Covid-19 related WUs.

According to Bowman, with just 30K volunteers dedicated to Covid-19, Folding@home was around an estimated 100 petaFLOPS of computing performance. Now, with over 400K, Folding@home is capable of 470 petaFLOPS of distributed computing performance. Put another way, about twice the peak compute of the Summit supercomputer. Summit has a peak compute of 200 petaFLOPS, with a LINPACK benchmark of 148.6 petaFLOPS.

Amazing! @foldingathome now has over 470 petaFLOPS of compute power. To put that in perspective, that's more than 2x the peak performance of the Summit super computer!

— Greg Bowman (@drGregBowman) March 20, 2020

Following the example set by PCMR, several tech outlets have joined in as well. Tom's Hardware, AnandTech, HotHardware, and OC3D have all put folding teams together. Even PC hardware vendors like EVGA have gotten in on it. Additionally, Gigabyte has donated 10 high-end PCs to Folding@home research teams.

As promised, here is our first glimpse of the #COVID19 spike protein (aka the demogorgon) in action, courtesy of @foldingathome . More to come! pic.twitter.com/iD2crCMHcX

— Greg Bowman (@drGregBowman) March 16, 2020

Folding@home has several CPU and GPU-based simulations aimed at analyzing the dynamics and properties of the Covid-19 proteins. From there, Folding@home will hopefully gain insight into how drugs could affect the virus, leading to potential treatment opportunities.

If you're interested in folding, you can download the Folding@home software here.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/84492-foldinghome-now-has-access-over-470-petaflops-distributed.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

A great way to get some use out of your otherwise useless Cryptocurrency miners.

 

[umbala]

A great way to get some use out of your otherwise useless Cryptocurrency miners.

/facepalm

 

[newcombcmb]

I joined up again myself. I was folding and doing Seti WAY before it came to light because of Covid.

But I still have to pay the electric bill, so only one machine will be working...

 

[scavengerspc]

A great way to get some use out of your otherwise useless Cryptocurrency miners.

Light the fire! ?

 

[DelJo63]

FYI: BE CAREFUL

Folding@home has been in the past associated with scamming. Hopefully things have changed :?:

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

FYI: BE CAREFUL

Folding@home has been in the past associated with scamming. Hopefully things have changed :?:

Source?

 

[DelJo63]

Source?

perfectly fair question --

1. it's an OLD issue
2. I didn't keep any references

so I can't back that up at the moment, sorry. Time will be necessary for the issue to present itself.

 

[treetops]

You just install the program. Basic settings are self explanatory. It's really easy to use it. Kudos on the simplicity.

 

[Mister_K]

perfectly fair question --

1. it's an OLD issue
2. I didn't keep any references

so I can't back that up at the moment, sorry. Time will be necessary for the issue to present itself.

Yes Stanford has been scamming. Damn them edus again, trying to outsmart us...

I might sign up but my PC is in my room and can get quite loud :X

 

[scavengerspc]

There was a scam where people would get emails claiming to be Folding@home but the download link had nothing to do with the actual program and was malware. Very much like the redline right now.

Maybe that's what jobeard was thinking about.

 

[penn919]

I joined up again myself. I was folding and doing Seti WAY before it came to light because of Covid.

But I still have to pay the electric bill, so only one machine will be working...

I joined up with tomshardware's team. Finally got a GPU work unit! I had to fix an issue with opencl.dll to get it to work though...

 

[bandit8623]

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Yes Stanford has been scamming. Damn them edus again, trying to outsmart us...

I might sign up but my PC is in my room and can get quite loud :X

I read your comment like 5 minutes ago and I’m still laughing my *** off ?

 

[wiyosaya]

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

That's BOINC, and, unfortunately, F@H is not a BOINC project.
The F@H link is https://foldingathome.org/

There was a scam where people would get emails claiming to be Folding@home but the download link had nothing to do with the actual program and was malware. Very much like the redline right now.

Maybe that's what jobeard was thinking about.

As you note, that was not the F@H project itself.

 

[bandit8623]

That's BOINC, and, unfortunately, F@H is not a BOINC project.
The F@H link is https://foldingathome.org/

As you note, that was not the F@H project itself.

I know. But they are also researching corona

 

[porthose]

Yea thought about putting Folding@home on a few raspberry pi's I have but they don't offer an ARM version. So I was going to create one along with creating a docker image so others like myself could contribute to the project. However their code is PROPRIETARY. Which means you can't look at it or inspect it, and there is no way of telling exactly what this software is doing, or what kind of information it is phoning home. Use it if you want to, but for me, not having the ability to inspect the code is a deal breaker.

 

[wiyosaya]

I know. But they are also researching corona

I had to check that out - you are right. Rosetta@Home is a BOINC project and is helping to model corona virus proteins. https://boinc.bakerlab.org/
I'll have to add Rosetta - however, it does not look like Rosetta has any GPU projects.

EDIT: Note - anyone new to BOINC and who wants to run it to fight Corona needs to install BOINC first, then sign up for Rosetta@Home - there is a list of projects in the BOINC interface and you may join through that.

 

[treetops]

Yes Stanford has been scamming. Damn them edus again, trying to outsmart us...

I might sign up but my PC is in my room and can get quite loud :X

You can set it to low.

 

[BadThad]

Rosetta@home FTW! Been running it for over a decade, give a look.

 

[schuck6566]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ling-malware-spread-by-folding-home-phishing/ and https://www.tomsguide.com/news/coronavirus-password-stealer These are the new ones out. You just have to be careful and download from legit sites!

 

[Gars]

Just rejoined to Rosetta

 

[Athlonite]

Nice that they have all of this compute power now but unfortunately you can't get a WU to save yourself

 

[wiyosaya]

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ling-malware-spread-by-folding-home-phishing/ and https://www.tomsguide.com/news/coronavirus-password-stealer These are the new ones out. You just have to be careful and download from legit sites!

So the word is ignore any e-mails asking you to contribute, and instead, go directly to the F@H site to download and install the F@H client - https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

Just rejoined to Rosetta
View attachment 86324

Joined Rosetta for the first time.

Nice that they have all of this compute power now but unfortunately you can't get a WU to save yourself

I managed to get two GPU work units pretty quickly.

 

[Markoni35]

This is bad news. Advanced computing and lab research is what produced this virus in the first place. The more the scientists know about viruses (and our immune system) the more fine-tuned weaponry they create.