We're all pretty much Geeks here at BLF to some extent. BLF seems a perfect audience to help move this project forward.
A crowdsourced computing project named Folding@Home (F@H) has focused it's efforts on solving the riddles of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. This project will speed the creation of effective treatment and development of a vaccine. Volunteers simply install the software on their PC's, which then perform calculations on bits of data (work units) downloaded from the F@H work servers. Once the calculations are complete, the results are uploaded to a F@H collection server to be aggregated into an increasingly accurate model of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Then the process repeats again automatically.
The software uses spare CPU cycles to do it's work. If you idle your computer overnight, for instance, 100% of it's power is devoted to running F@H work. When you're using the PC for productivity, the F@H software steps into the background so as not to slow the host PC's other tasks. There's a simple slider on the software control to throttle it if need be.
My experience on a WIN10 laptop has been:
1. Download & install F@H 'folding' software.
2. F@H software was assigned a work unit from a F@H work server It took a few hours to be assigned a work unit.
3. After ~ 60 hrs. or so, the completed work unit was uploaded to a F@H collection server.
4. Repeat automatically. Again & again.
I'm still tinkering with Puppy Linux to make it work. It might be more seamless on a more common distro. I'll try Ubuntu and OpenSUSE next.
Many of us feel frustrated & helpless right now because of the life disruption caused by COVID-19. A few have descended into pointless political bickering. The F@H project is something constructive we can all do together as fellow human beings to move the science forward. It's not difficult. It's free. There's lots of good assistance in the FAQ's on the F@H site if needed.
From Tom's Hardware (March 21, 2020):
"Propelled by average enthusiasts in their shared quest to defeat COVID-19, the Folding@Home network is now pushing out 470 PetaFLOPS of raw compute power. To put that in perspective, that's twice as fast as Summit, the world's fastest supercomputer, making the network faster than any known supercomputer. It's also faster than the top seven supercomputers in the world, combined."
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/folding-at-home-worlds-top-supercomputers-coronavirus-covid-19
From nVidia (April 4, 2020):
"The tweet party started on Wednesday, March 25, at 1:55pm.
That’s when the research network that Folding@Home manages had arguably become the world’s most powerful supercomputer. Its call to help fight the coronavirus on March 15 had amassed enough donations of spare cycles on home computers to create a crowd-sourced exascale supercomputer.
In just 10 days, supporters had downloaded the group’s software on hundreds of thousands of home PCs to help crack the code on COVID-19.
“It’s been a pretty amazing experience,” said Greg Bowman, director of Folding@Home, an all-volunteer team of researchers. Bowman’s also an associate professor at the Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, home to one of 11 labs worldwide that keep the Folding@Home network humming."
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/04/01/foldingathome-exaflop-coronavirus/
From Wikipedia:
"Folding@home is one of the world's fastest computing systems. With heightened interest in the project as a result of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, the system achieved a speed of approximately 768 petaFLOPS, or 1.5 x86 exaFLOPS, by March 25, 2020,[7] making it the world's first exaFLOP computing system. This level of performance from its large-scale computing network has allowed researchers to run computationally costly atomic-level simulations of protein folding thousands of times longer than formerly achieved."
"Since March 2020, Folding@home launched a program to assist researchers around the world who are working on finding a cure and learning more about the coronavirus pandemic. The initial wave of projects simulate potentially druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the related SARS-CoV virus, about which there is significantly more data available."
Please help unlock the secrets of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus by taking part in this project. The life saved might be your loved one.
Folding at home homepage:
https://foldingathome.org
slmjim