[texas booster]

The folding client has been helping map the coronavirus since March 2020.

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.

[texas booster]

Ping to the old Folding @ Home ping list.

I haven't posted but once this year. I trust that those who are getting new computers and video cards for Christmas will install the F@H client with team 36120 Free Republic Folders, and continue to fold in the background.

[texas booster]

To get an idea o how powerful these new GPU folders are, take a look at this user:

https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=1096093

Yep, one user pushing 2 - 3 billion points per day. Here is an article on the new NVidia supercomputer:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/08/17/nvidia-provides-more-details-on-selene-supercomputer/?sh=25f9730c4e9e

You can have one like it, comprised of 280 NVidia DGX A100s plus support hardware and software, amounting to a list price of $56M.