Folding at home - Folding@home - https://foldingathome.org/

[Avengium]

DokTwo on the OA Discord server has mentioned that he likes to contribute to scientific research by lending his computer’s processing power, so that an organisation can uncover the dynamics of protein folding, intermediate conformational states, and protein structure.

Later in the conversation, DokTwo said that those of us involved in the Orion’s Arm Universe Project could contribute by also running Folding@home on our PCs.

What do you think about putting out a call or proposal so that anyone who wants to, can sign up and have the Folding@home software running on their PCs?

Below is an explanation of how it works.

Folding@home (FAH or F@h) is a distributed computing project aimed to help scientists develop new therapeutics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. This includes the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins, and is reliant on simulations run on volunteers' personal computers.

The project utilizes graphics processing units (GPUs), and central processing units (CPUs) including ARM processors like those on the Raspberry Pi for distributed computing and scientific research. The project uses statistical simulation methodology that is a paradigm shift from traditional computing methods. As part of the client–server model network architecture, the volunteered machines each receive pieces of a simulation (work units), complete them, and return them to the project's database servers, where the units are compiled into an overall simulation. Volunteers can track their contributions on the Folding@home website, which makes volunteers' participation competitive and encourages long-term involvement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

Official page of Folding at home:

https://foldingathome.org/
You have the power to help cure disease. Folding@home turns your computer's idle power into a global supercomputer for biomedical research. Free. Safe. Easy.

[ProxCenBound]

That's a cool and nice thing.

I don't think that officially, as a worldbuilding project, we should involve ourselves in recommending what people do with their computers. Of course, folks are free to talk about it as individuals.

[Drashner1]

There's also the SETI@Home project which does something similar for SETI. I actually did this one for a time many years ago.

I agree with ProxCenBound that we shouldn't necessarily 'officially' as an organization call for the use of either of these (or any other similar) uses of people's computers.

However, perhaps we could add links to the projects within our Links and Extras pages? We could include a brief explanation of what each is and make it clear their use is a matter of personal choice if someone wants to.

Thoughts?

Todd

[Chaya2766]

From my usage of the Folding@Home software and website here are some bits of knowledge that might be useful:
- having a Folding@Home account is not needed to start contributing to whichever team you want to contribute to
- it is necessary to have an account to create a team, and the team's stats page on the Folding@Home website will show the creator's name
- it is possible to add a website link to the team

Here's an example team I randomly picked from the leaderboard so you can see for yourself how exactly that looks: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/257196
And here's a link to the official Folding@Home guide for creating and managing teams: https://foldingathome.org/guides/v8-5#managing-teams

People who are familiar with this software would easily be able to start contributing given just the information that the team stats link shows. I personally found the process immediately obvious once I looked at my machine settings in the software which I needed to adjust anyway, so I think anyone who has enough interest to install the software would very likely figure it out quickly without needing the other links or any custom instructions. Having links both to the team and the project's main site would be enough for anyone wanting to contribute I think.

One fitting spot I see where the links to these projects would fit nicely is on the "Forums, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, other resources" page, accessible through the Links & Extras from the main Orion's Arm website page. If the decision is made to create a team and include links to the projects, I think that would be a good place to put them.

[Avengium]

Ok. Thanks for the advice and the tutorial Chaya2766.
I created a Orion's Arm team following the link you provided.

The team is this:

Logo: Official OA logo. Transparent image.
Team: 1068461
Name: Orions Arm Universe Project
[ The character ' is not allowed.]

You can join this "team" putting the number: 1068461 in your team field.

[Dokk]

From my usage of the Folding@Home software and website here are some bits of knowledge that might be useful:
- having a Folding@Home account is not needed to start contributing to whichever team you want to contribute to
- it is necessary to have an account to create a team, and the team's stats page on the Folding@Home website will show the creator's name
- it is possible to add a website link to the team

Here's an example team I randomly picked from the leaderboard so you can see for yourself how exactly that looks: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/257196
And here's a link to the official Folding@Home guide for creating and managing teams: https://foldingathome.org/guides/v8-5#managing-teams

People who are familiar with this software would easily be able to start contributing given just the information that the team stats link shows. I personally found the process immediately obvious once I looked at my machine settings in the software which I needed to adjust anyway, so I think anyone who has enough interest to install the software would very likely figure it out quickly without needing the other links or any custom instructions. Having links both to the team and the project's main site would be enough for anyone wanting to contribute I think.

One fitting spot I see where the links to these projects would fit nicely is on the "Forums, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, other resources" page, accessible through the Links & Extras from the main Orion's Arm website page. If the decision is made to create a team and include links to the projects, I think that would be a good place to put them.

Hello, i am the aforementioned Doktwo, had trouble with my account earlier.
I agree with the previous asessment that maybe we dont need to make an official "You should all do this" encouragement from an official site, but i do think many in the community might just be interested in this or other distributed volunteer computing projects.

Furthermore, i spoke to one of their moderators on their own Discord, who was able to provide some technical advice for maximising value:

- When GPU folding, NVIDIA units outperform AMD units by a lot
- AMD CPUs tend to be better due to using equally strong CPU cores. Folding always proceeds at the pace of the slowest utilized core (Multi-threading is counted as "cores")
- Many newer intel and ARM CPUs, especially for Laptops tend to use many smaller efficient-cores, but caluclations assume equally strong cores
- NPUs, found on modern dedicated AI-capable CPUs are not utilized at all, only using FP32 calculations, not FP64
- CPUs with larger caches tend to perform better, especially AMD X3D models. "The kings of FAH"

Obviously, even without these perfect conditions, one can contribute too.
My personal observations, using the sites own "Points-per-day" average to estimate computing Value:
RX 5700 (AMD) gpu from 2019: 1 million PPD
Ryzen 5 7600 X3D higher-end CPU from 2024: roughly 250k ppd on 80% usage
Old intel laptop CPU: 20-40k ppd
Apple M1 CPU: 50-100k PPD

Keep in mind that thermal throttling may affect initial and sustained numbers. I am glad we have a team now and that projects like this exist, as someone with relatives affected by neurological diseases.

[Dokk]

Ok. Thanks for the advice and the tutorial  Chaya2766.
I created a Orion's Arm team following the link you provided.

The team is this:

Logo: Official OA logo. Transparent image.
Team: 1068461
Name:  Orions Arm Universe Project
[ The character ' is not allowed.]

You can join this "team" putting the number:  1068461  in your team field.

Looks like quite some contributions have been made already

[Avengium]

At the moment, I don't see many people collaborating, as your message seems to suggest. I only see contributions from Dokk.

Stats: https://stats.foldingathome.org/

OAUP team: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/1068461
How to join a FAH team: https://foldingathome.org/faq/teams

Dokk user account: https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/name/Doktwo

I hope that donating computing power to Folding at Home won't negatively impact my concentration or how I use my PC.

So I don't want to make a big deal about using Folding at Home or not using it.

[Dokk]

At the moment, I don't see many people collaborating, as your message seems to suggest. I only see contributions from Dokk.

Stats: https://stats.foldingathome.org/

OAUP team: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/1068461
How to join a FAH team: https://foldingathome.org/faq/teams

Dokk user account: https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/name/Doktwo

I hope that donating computing power to Folding at Home won't negatively impact my concentration or how I use my PC.

So I don't want to make a big deal about using Folding at Home or not using it.

And Anonymus, that can be several people. It is possible to make a machine score for a team without making a user account, these all collectively count as  Anonymus. (Also why anonymus is counted as the number #1 contributor of all accounts)