An extremely noobish and ignorant F@H question

[Beev]

I got a PS3 recently and downloaded F@H for it. I let it run anytime I'm not playing a game (and I joined the AT team). I've read up about it on the site and know a little about how it works.

My question is this, do I really make a difference? What good so far has come out of F@H? Is my contribution really worthwhile?

I don't mind leaving my PS3 on 24/7. It'll only add like $5 to my power bill every month. I guess I'm just curious about it all. Have any cures came directly from F@H data?

 

[Shortass]

I think about it the same way I think about voting. Do I REALLY make a difference, my ONE vote (system)? The answer, of course, is no. But the combined efforts of everyone who thought Folding might be a good idea and did it, together, will hopefully push forward some research that could some day save many lives. Like all research it's slow, but it comes at little to no real cost to me and I can't justify NOT doing it, so why worry about if my spare cpu clocks will save humanity?

Oh, and helping TeAm Anandtech rise in the ranks is enough for me as well.

 

[Assimilator1]

Actually I think the answer would be yes in the longer run ,but I'll let F@H veterans answer that

 

[ProviaFan]

Has F@H cured a disease? No, and from my limited understanding it won't do so directly. However, F@H does research on things that will be of great assistance in developing cures ones those things are better understood. This page has more info, if you're interested in technical papers and info.

 

[GLeeM]

Your PS3 is a great folding computer!

It is very fast at doing the special work units (WUs) made just for PS3s.

The PS3, along with the other high performance clients, are going to increase the rate that cures/research is done. The minimum deadline, the time that the WU must be completed, is very short and so the whole project will get finished much faster.

A regular client WU can have a deadline of like 20 to 100 days. The high performance clients' WUs are what? two days? and when there are tens of thousands of WUs to finish a project that means the PS3 will greatly, vastly speed the research!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Beev]

It takes my PS3 8 hours to do a 50000 unit WU.