Help Cure Coronavirus with Your PC's Leftover Processing Power

Tom's Hardware, Future US, Inc. ^ | 03/03/2020 | Niels Broekhuijsen

[texas booster]

The Coronavirus is causing lots of problems around the world, and it can feel a bit unfair that many of us are home living our lives, unable to help. However, that doesn't mean we can't do anything. Folding@Home announced that it is taking the fight to the Coronavirus, and you can donate your computer's leftover processing resources to help researchers find a cure.

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project run by the Stanford University, aimed at learning about protein folding with the purpose of fighting disease. Distributed computing means that rather than using one big supercomputer, Folding@Home relies on users donating their computer's reserve power to the organization as a charity. By concentrating the computing power of the untold masses on singular problems, the organization can wield the power of a supercomputer, but without the cost.

To understand how this helps, we have to explain a little bit about protein folding. When proteins are made they emerge as a long string, but for this string to be useful to the body, it needs to fold into a three-dimensional shape. These folded proteins can be found on the surface of cells and they determine what enters and exits the cell.

The 2019-nCoV also has proteins on its surface called spikes, which trick the ACE2 lung cell surface receptor into letting the virus into the cell and starting a viral infection. One way to stop infection is to find a way to block this protein that resides on the virus, preventing the virus from binding to our cells, and thus rendering it unable to establish an infection.

[stylin19a]

there is some tweaking.

Click on the folding icon and click on web control.

you can adjust power and adjust when. whether that helps or not you be the judge.

they haven’t yet added coronavirus to the disease list...

[stylin19a]

there is also advanced control, but i don’t see where you can specify number of cores...

[stylin19a]

sorry to be a PITA...I’m fishing for some of this info myself...my PC doesn’t have a case fan...
this might help

https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=26036&sid=888d5234a879c51a694babaf52b0fb1b#p261090

[LonePalm]

I heartily endorse Folding at Home.

I've been folding for about 12 years now and have folded just over 700 Million points. I fold about 1,500 points a day.

WWG1WGA

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[Craigon]

Wow, here’s a blast from the past. I was into this with folding team Freep going against the Dummy Underground many many years ago... even built a “folding rack” with a bunch of old mother boards..lol. My 1 video card alone can probably out fold that old setup ..haha. I’ll have to revisit this.