Folding@Home: What Can You Tell Me in 3 Hours?

[Ryan Smith]

Hey guys;

I can't really go in to the details of anything, but I'm in a situation where I need to know whatever you can tell me about Folding@Home in the next couple of hours. I'm familiar with other projects since I participate in them, but not Folding@Home. So whatever you can tell me about Folding@Home quickly, would help me out a lot here.

-TIA
Ryan Smith
Junior Systems Editor
AnandTech.com

 

[BobDaMenkey]

F@H is a project devoted to understanding protien folding. The WUs are all different generations of protiens. Understanding how the protiens fold can help us figured out how to cure dieseases and figure out the causes of them.

At least that is how I understand it. You can check out some of the results from the Folding project on stanfords results page (http://folding.stanford.edu/results.html)

I fold because I want my spare clock cycles to go to something that can have the potential to really benift everyone.

 

[CupCak3]

F@H currently does projects on Alzheimer?s disease, cancer, huntington?s disease, osteogenesis disease ribosome and & antibiotics. The name F@H comes from the folding of proteins which when proteins mis-replicate, it case cause the above diseases. The project is ran through Stanford Uni.

F@H is a very ?floating point? intensive program. Currently under development is the use of high end ATI vid cards and the PS3 to take use of their floating point capabilities. The beta for the GPU will start on Mon. Screenshots of the PS3 have already been released.

Points are awarded on a scale which is "benchmarked against a 2.8 P4.

alot of good and quick info can be found here.

http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html


Sorry for not more info, i am at work and don't really have the time to elaborate more.



On a side note thought I do wish AT would include F@H or another "big" DC project in their benchmarking. I think this could create alot of traffic especially during big events like the realse of the C2D Their is a huge following in DC and it is only getting bigger. none of the big review sites run benchies to accomidate this.

 

[Ryan Smith]

Thanks for the info so far guys, I appreciate it.

Originally posted by: CupCak3
On a side note thought I do wish AT would include F@H or another "big" DC project in their benchmarking. I think this could create alot of traffic especially during big events like the realse of the C2D Their is a huge following in DC and it is only getting bigger. none of the big review sites run benchies to accomidate this.

I can answer that. Most DC projects use highly-optimized routines for their processing. This means that DC programs are of no use when looking at a new architecture since there's no optimized routine for the architecture, and otherwise they tend to scale perfectly linearly with new processors when speed-bumps are being done. It's certainly something we're interested in when it doesn't have those kind of pitfalls, however.

 

[Assimilator1]

I wanta know what the big secret is

(sorry I can't help you about F@H ,I haven't run it yet)

 

[GLeeM]

Is it too late to give more information?

Folding@Home home page.

Could you still use personal opinions?

 

[Ryan Smith]

Originally posted by: GLeeM
Is it too late to give more information?

Folding@Home home page.

Could you still use personal opinions?

I have everything I need, thanks.