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SETI@home Sunsets – Folding@home Begins Mapping Coronavirus

By jamewebadmin

07 Mar

Updated: April 18, 2020 to include COVID-19 additions

At the beginning of March, the SETI@home distributed-computing project announced it would be going on hiatus at the end of the month. The project was one of the first allowed the every day computer user to donate some of their free computing time to help with research.

Now’s a good time to use technology for good. An example of how data can help remedy disease. I’d recommend checking out Folding@home. A distributed computing project that’s been around since early 2000. It’s named after “protein folding.”

If you install the software and join a project, it will run in the background and use spare graphics processing (GPU) power to run calculations. Your computer will be one of the hundreds of thousands of computers running these calculations.

The benefits of sharing your left over computer power this way is straightforward. With very little technical knowledge you can set up your computer to help find cures for COVID-19. The more people that get involved, the more processing power there is to simulate the protein folding and the faster the results will be achieved.

These projects are efforts to assist researchers around the world taking up the global fight against COVID-19.  I’ve set up the software on my gaming rig. With many computers working towards the same goal, we aim to help develop a therapeutic remedy as quickly as possible. It’s easy! I’d encourage you to do the same.

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