seans_potato_business
Senior Cook
Explanation
Folding@Home is a project that uses spare computer-processing power (that would otherwise go to waste) to make calculations that are used by scientists in an effort to understand and alleviate a variety of ills including sickle-cell disease, Alzheimer's disease, BSE (mad cow disease), cancer, Huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis among others. The project is also be used to design new antibiotics, to help combat the spread of resistant bacterial-strains.
The computing-power needed to perform all these calculations is huge. A super-computer is prohibitively expensive and would waste money that could be better spent elsewhere in science. That's where we come in. By splitting the work into small chunks, called 'work units' and distributing them across the globe, Folding@Home participants constitute a virtual super-computer that easily out-competes even the fastest conventional super-computer built to date (Blue Gene). The program uses only spare processing power of participants computers, so it doesn't actually slow the computer down. As soon as you start to do something on your computer that needs the resources that Folding@Home is using, the Folding@Home program gives them up immediately. The results is that there is no negative impact on your computing experience, and scientists get their results that bit faster.
This is a non-commercial project, run by Standford University, USA and has been going for over seven years and is endorsed by such well-known companies as Google and Sony.
Their official website is here.
Their Wikipedia page is here.
A general Google search is here.
There's an FAQ with a video to watch here.
There are currently over 50 published research papers based on results gained from the folding@home project, and the number continues to increase. You can see the papers here.
For a discussion of the science, see their official explanation.
It will not harm your computer and it wont collect any information about you. Thousands of people run it and news websites occasionally report on it.
How you can help
If you would like to help out already, you can download the program from here: Folding@home - Download
Most of you will probably want the very top one, for Windows XP/Vista.
When you've installed it, you can enter any username you like (I'd suggest your DC username so that we can see each other's scores on the scoreboard) and the DC team number: 111323.
You can check your position on the scoreboard here: Kakao Stats - Team Members - (if you've only just joined, it will take a few days to a week before you appear on the scoreboard).
If you've any questions, please post and I'll be happy to help.
Go Team DC!
Folding@Home is a project that uses spare computer-processing power (that would otherwise go to waste) to make calculations that are used by scientists in an effort to understand and alleviate a variety of ills including sickle-cell disease, Alzheimer's disease, BSE (mad cow disease), cancer, Huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis among others. The project is also be used to design new antibiotics, to help combat the spread of resistant bacterial-strains.
The computing-power needed to perform all these calculations is huge. A super-computer is prohibitively expensive and would waste money that could be better spent elsewhere in science. That's where we come in. By splitting the work into small chunks, called 'work units' and distributing them across the globe, Folding@Home participants constitute a virtual super-computer that easily out-competes even the fastest conventional super-computer built to date (Blue Gene). The program uses only spare processing power of participants computers, so it doesn't actually slow the computer down. As soon as you start to do something on your computer that needs the resources that Folding@Home is using, the Folding@Home program gives them up immediately. The results is that there is no negative impact on your computing experience, and scientists get their results that bit faster.
This is a non-commercial project, run by Standford University, USA and has been going for over seven years and is endorsed by such well-known companies as Google and Sony.
Their official website is here.
Their Wikipedia page is here.
A general Google search is here.
There's an FAQ with a video to watch here.
There are currently over 50 published research papers based on results gained from the folding@home project, and the number continues to increase. You can see the papers here.
For a discussion of the science, see their official explanation.
It will not harm your computer and it wont collect any information about you. Thousands of people run it and news websites occasionally report on it.
How you can help
If you would like to help out already, you can download the program from here: Folding@home - Download
Most of you will probably want the very top one, for Windows XP/Vista.
When you've installed it, you can enter any username you like (I'd suggest your DC username so that we can see each other's scores on the scoreboard) and the DC team number: 111323.
You can check your position on the scoreboard here: Kakao Stats - Team Members - (if you've only just joined, it will take a few days to a week before you appear on the scoreboard).
If you've any questions, please post and I'll be happy to help.
Go Team DC!
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