Are you Folding? (repost)
Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 1:01 pm by Jeff Hoy(This is a repost from the archives, it’s still important and I will be reposting it from time to time.)
If you’re not, you should be. I am. On my quad core desktop, on my dual core laptop, and on my PS3. All of them run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All of them processing at maximum capacity. They are looking for information that could lead to a cure of some of humanities greatest ailments. Alzheimer’s, Cancer, Parkinson’s. The answers may be out there and they may be hidden in proteins that live in our bodies. That’s what folding does, it simulates the proteins and how they come together, or "fold."
Folding refers to a Stanford University project named Folding@Home. It is the world’s fastest supercomputer. But it’s not a supercomputer. It’s the largest collection of regular home computers and laptops in the world working together to process all of this information. Anybody can contribute to this project. All you have to do is download the Folding@Home program from the download page, install it and let it run as much as possible.
Folding@Home doesn’t interfere in your daily computer use at all. It runs in the background, using the spare processing power that your computer has. It will always run, when you’re typing an email, reading a web site, or playing a game. As long as you have spare processing power, and you always do, Folding@Home will run. It’s that simple.
It doesn’t cost you anything. It won’t interfere with your computer use. It’s great research for all of humanity. So why aren’t you doing it?
