Posted on 11/21/2006 8:07:23 PM PST by texas booster
Today ATI's graphics processors help accelerate complex computations in stream computing applications used in scientific research. ATI is supporting bio-medical research to help scientists understand disease at the genetic level. With a strong understanding of how diseases form, it will become possible to develop diagnostic methods, and preventative treatment and medicine for many acute diseases in humans.
Stanford University is using ATI’s GPUs (Graphics Processor Units) to run Folding@Home, a distributed computing project designed by its chemistry department. This application performs computationally intensive simulations of protein folding, using the stream computing capabilities of ATI’s Radeon® 1900 and 1950 Series processors, which provide incremental power over CPU processing. ATI’s Radeon® X1900 and Radeon® X1950 Series process the complex calculations of the simulation and render advanced 3D visualization of the protein folding process in real time.
Folding@Home will help researchers uncover how certain diseases develop, including:
Cancer
Alzheimer's Disease
Parkinson's Disease
Huntington's Disease
Osteogenesis Imperfecta
Stanford University’s research team discovered that ATI’s Radeon X1900 and Radeon X1950 Series of products provide 20 to 40 times faster processing over CPUs in many of the calculations needed to simulate the folding of proteins.
What is Protein Folding Proteins are necklaces of amino acids – long chain molecules that drive all biochemical reactions in the human body, helping to build bones, muscles and blood vessels, and helping the body fight infections. To accomplish these tasks, proteins must take on a particular shape, or, to “fold”. Proteins that fold incorrectly can cause complications and can lead to critical diseases. Folding@Home simulates the folding process to understand why proteins don’t fold correctly. The findings will help researchers prevent and cure these diseases.
You Can Help Find the Cure Folding@home uses distributed computing to simulate protein folding – instead of using super computers, the workload is broken up into small work units and distributed across 100,000’s of PC systems over the internet. When users throughout the world download and run the application they directly contribute to a good cause through the power of their ATI graphics processor. The GPU version of the application will use the processing power of end users’ GPUs to accelerate the simulation and provide data to Stanford’s researchers faster.
Every new PC that runs the application gets us closer to the cure.
You can help by simply downloading and running the Folding@Home application developed by Stanford University. The application is free and secure. It will run in the background, making use of spare GPU capacity in your PC, without impacting the performance of your other applications.
You can increase your contribution by forming and joining teams and competing against others. Contributors are assigned a score indicating the number and difficulty of completed work units. Rankings and other statistics are posted to the Folding@Home website.
Please note that, currently, only the following products in ATI’s Radeon X1900 Series and Radeon X1950 Series can run the application. We will post information about upcoming products that will support this application in the near future.
Radeon X1900 Series: Radeon X1900 GT, Radeon X1900 XT, Radeon X1900 XTX, Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition
Radeon X1950 Series: Radeon X1950 XTX, Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition
I did lose one completed job, which was in position 5 in my queue. At some point it just disappeared. c'est la vie ...
I am showing 3 WU's at the moment and have one more stored and one in the works.
What a relief to know my efforts were not in vain.
Texas Booster, thanks again for you help with this.
Lets look here later tonight and see what credits are posted:
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&a=2&t=36120
Quite a start with the team. Here are your points so far:
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=201902
It looks like you have been credited with 4 work units so far.
Starting a new thread over here. Please come and visit!
Better yet, ping a few friends and help them to get started.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1754766/posts
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