FR Folding@Home Project Update -- The March To 25 Million Points

Stanford University's Folding@Home Stats page ^ | 05/28/2007 | Texas Booster

[texas booster]

Time for a new FreeRepublic folding@home thread.

Our FreeRepublic team of 460 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE).

Currently, the team is in 54th place (with 1050 active CPUs - 123,500 completed Work Units and 24.75 million points).

Please take the time this Memorial Day weekend to run the F@H program and contribute to the basic research that may one day save YOUR life.

This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want more details, please see the links posted below (or read one of the previous 30+ folding threads)

[texas booster]

We will see lots of benchmarks hit this next week.

Free Republic Folders - A Tribute to Ronald Reagan, will hit 25,000,000 points. Keep in mind that we have been publicized in just the last 18 months, so our growth is phenomenal.

On a personal front, the race is on to see if josephw will pass Texas Booster before TB hits 600,000 points. Lets just say that I have more faith in a Tony Romo field goal hold, than in my chances.

This weekend may be the one that shows Folding@home with over 1 petaflop in current production. Currently F@H is at 905 teraflops. The linky is here:

Worldwide Folding Stats by OS

Swordmaker and Route66_FreeRepublic will both break the 100,000 points barrier this week!

Both G&HLowry and LanPB01 will also hit 100,000 points in the next week! Next to lrenh, Malsua and Klutz these two have hit the 100,000 mark faster than anyone else on the team.

[texas booster]

Finally, a new Folding thread.

Please drop by and say Hello, especially if you are one of the new members!

On or off the ping list, let me know!

[texas booster]

Finally, a new Folding thread.

Please drop by and say Hello, especially if you are one of the new members!

On or off the ping list, let me know!

[null and void]

Hello.

[texas booster]

Folding@Home FAQ for new users:

What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.

Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don't, into their predestined shapes - and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer's and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.

How does it work?: You download a safe, tested program (see link below) that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.

Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.

How do I get started folding for Team FreeRepublic?:
1.) Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page (Folding@home Client Download). Type in your desired user-name.
2.) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic!
3.) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.

How can my computer help? Even if they were given exclusive access to all of the world's supercomputers, Stanford still wouldn't have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people's desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.

There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.

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List of Relevant Folding Links
Why Fold - Watch This !!

Another Folding Clip

The Inner Life of a Cell

Folding@home Client Download

FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats

Extreme Overclockers Stats for FreeRepublic

Another Stats Page

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Competition (Not!!) Dummies ..Daily Kos

Dummie Folding Threads #7 #8 #9#10#11 #12

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Other Useful Stuff - Links

How much are those work units worth? And what are they?
All Projects Listed
Point Summary for Workunits

Stat Image Generator

Fahmon Third Party Monitoring Software

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Past FreeRepublic Folding threads

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23 #24 #25 #26 #27 #28 #29 #30 #31 #32 #33 #34 #35 #36 #37

[Incorrigible]

I’ve been bouncing around at 100 for weeks now. I’m going to bring a 3rd processor into the mix soon!

[texas booster]

Welcome to a new folder. Thanks for helping us out.

As always, please ping us if you have any questions.

[A.Hun]

Hey texas! Any idea why Vista wouldn’t run Folding properly? It installs and seems to run ok, but cannot get packets without errors.

I’ve been through all the firewalls and it seems to have authorization...any ideas?

[GRRRRR]

-

[Andyman]

Signed up! Thanks for organizing this.

[texas booster]

The addition of folders with Linux and a Sony Playstation has sure made it hard to guess what it takes to advance.

How fast a system are you looking at? We just brought an AMD 3800+ X2 on line, but there seems to be a problem with Ubuntu and the AMD chip/motherboard drivers.

My son and I have been experimenting with Linux on other systems and will soon convert another of our systems over to Linux for good. We run with a Live CD and like the results so far.

[texas booster]

THANK YOU!

Remember, the life you save may be your own.

Please let us know if we can help. It really is pretty easy though.

[texas booster]

Breaking into the top 100 in less than 7 days.

Good job.

[SShultz460]

I’m still grinding it out. Going to upgrade soon to a smokin machine :)

I wanted to check my stats, but their server is down atm.

BTTT

[Incorrigible]

I’m just repurposing an old laptop, nothing fancy.

Though I remain an advocate of Windows over LINUX. I like being a paid programmer!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[texas booster]

Well, maybe because you have Vista? /jk

There are pages of folding threads on the main forum discussing (well, mostly cussing) M$ Vi$ta and its issues. Vista presets a number of variables that the world has taken for granted to be a certain setting. No more.

The packet error issue may also be a Stanford problem. The university network has encountered a series of problem while they upgrade the network.

What is your error message?

[texas booster]

I started to upgrade to Vista after trying an MSDN copy. I decided that if I am going to do that much work and spend that much money that I could learn Linux.

Its a slow go, but I had an older P4-400 running Puppy Linux in about 30 minutes.

Still, all of my repair work is done to Winders systems. I would hate to kill a cash cow and switch customers over to Linux.

Except for a few folks ...

[texas booster]

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=178098

Still pumping out points.

What kind of system are you looking at? We just built an AMD X2 3800+. Installed Linux. Mostly works.

[processing please hold]

Hello.