Cutting edge scientist's are working on a molecule to block Covid19's ability to attach to a human cell. They are also working on other disease's such as Parkinson's and cancer. Their goal is to combine at least 1 million home computers to help crunch all the data that's needed. If you leave your computer on, it either works in the background, or you can toggle it to off while you use it. Their website is Folding@home.org Here is an article about it. I figure if I can contribute, then maybe it'll save my life someday. If any of you folks can explain how they combine all these home computers for this job that would be interesting. It's beyond me. The Folding@home.org site is better than that small article.

Allow others access to my computers based on this article? No

Never, ever turn over control of your computer. Never.Besides, thousands of common home computers are nothing compared to super computers.

Folding@home and Roseta@Home are very well known and respected distributed computer systems. They are very powerful and have more computing capability than many of the supercomputers around. Distributed computing is scalable,allowing it to change easily for the task. Supercomputers, once built, are very difficult to reconfigure. I have participated in some distributed computer projects and the benefits to research are tremendous.Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are an example of distributed computing(cloud computing).

delwhjr wrote:Folding@home and Roseta@Home are very well known and respected distributed computer systems. They are very powerful and have more computing capability than many of the supercomputers around. Distributed computing is scalable,allowing it to change easily for the task. Supercomputers, once built, are very difficult to reconfigure. I have participated in some distributed computer projects and the benefits to research are tremendous.Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are an example of distributed computing(cloud computing).You seem to understand this. How do they administer such a program and assign x numbers of computers a task? Do they take a complex problem and divide it into little pieces? How do they implement this scalable method? I totally see why people have a hard time believing that thousands of little computers could outdo a supercomputer, or in this instance, 20 times more powerful.

The PlayStation 3, with it's unique and powerful Cell processor, was a part of the folding@home project. I let mine run it regularly, to help humanity. Don't be scared. They are not hackers. Amazing use of technology.

Combined home computers reach exaflop levels | Good Sam Community

magicbus
Explorer II
Mar 29, 2020
Did you download a browser or maybe a word processor, photo editor or maybe even a tax program? This is no different. You download a program then a chunk of data to process and it returns the results just as your browser did to read this message. In fact I bet their program sends back much less information than your browser!

You just need to do your due diligence to trust the source.
Dave
wa8yxm
Explorer III
Mar 29, 2020
Lwiddis wrote:
Allow others access to my computers based on this article? No

There was a project S.E.T.I. that did this and has done it for years. It was even featured on an episode of the TV show JAG but the program is in fact real (I know as I was part of it).

now there is danger of someone faking such a program but what SETI did was set you up with a screen saver. a packet of data was downloaded and when your computer went into screensaver mode it worked on it.

so this may well be a legit program

I don't do screen savers any more.
wildtoad
Explorer II
Mar 29, 2020
Nope not gonna happen in my house. I’d think that the guys would reach out to IBM and others. I’d suspect they have sufficient MIPS or Flops to do the research.
opnspaces
Navigator II
Mar 29, 2020
many years ago I ran SETI@HOME (search for extra terrestrial intelligence)on my computers. If I remember correctly it was run by Berkley. Each computer would be assigned a bit of data from one of the many radio telescopes and would crunch through the data looking for certain patterns. Once the packet was analyzed the computer would upload it's findings and then download another chunk of data. Actually I just looked at the SETI website and it has a link to the site for the Covid 19 virus research.
Link
Jackathan
Explorer
Mar 29, 2020
The PlayStation 3, with it's unique and powerful Cell processor, was a part of the folding@home project. I let mine run it regularly, to help humanity. Don't be scared. They are not hackers. Amazing use of technology.
T18skyguy
Explorer
Mar 29, 2020
delwhjr wrote:
Folding@home and Roseta@Home are very well known and respected distributed computer systems. They are very powerful and have more computing capability than many of the supercomputers around. Distributed computing is scalable,allowing it to change easily for the task. Supercomputers, once built, are very difficult to reconfigure. I have participated in some distributed computer projects and the benefits to research are tremendous.
Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are an example of distributed computing(cloud computing).

You seem to understand this. How do they administer such a program and assign x numbers of computers a task? Do they take a complex problem and divide it into little pieces? How do they implement this scalable method? I totally see why people have a hard time believing that thousands of little computers could outdo a supercomputer, or in this instance, 20 times more powerful.
delwhjr
Explorer
Mar 29, 2020
Folding@home and Roseta@Home are very well known and respected distributed computer systems. They are very powerful and have more computing capability than many of the supercomputers around. Distributed computing is scalable,allowing it to change easily for the task. Supercomputers, once built, are very difficult to reconfigure. I have participated in some distributed computer projects and the benefits to research are tremendous.
Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are an example of distributed computing(cloud computing).
ScottG
Nomad
Mar 29, 2020
Never, ever turn over control of your computer.
Never.

Besides, thousands of common home computers are nothing compared to super computers.
Lwiddis
Explorer II
Mar 29, 2020
Allow others access to my computers based on this article? No

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