Tuesday, May 05, 2020

4769 - Folding@home


Folding@home is a program that researchers use like a big super computer. You sign up to let them use your processor time to fold and unfold proteins to see how they work. Right now it's working on Covid-19 proteins. I think everyone is working on Covid-19 proteins. The program runs in the background even if you close your browser. You can sign out but don't turn off your computer. Here's the latest picture of what I'm running.
(Click it to big it)

As you can see there is an option on how much time you want to allocate to the F@h program. I have it running full power even when I'm on my computer. I don't even notice it running.

One reason I can do that is because the last time I got a new computer, I tried to future proof it by getting as much stuff as I could without breaking the bank. So I have an i7 processor with 16 gigs of Ram. Of course it's two years old but Dell is still pushing i3 and i5 processors. But there are i9s available. And you can get 64 gigs of ram.

So what could go wrong? Well, one thing it did was reset chrome. This was after I had to reset the program while I was getting it going. I lost all the icons on my bookmarks and lost all my extensions. Not earth shattering, just a pain. I learned to shut down chrome before reloading F@h.

You get points for completing tasks that you can use for... nothing. You can form teams and the one with the most points gets... nothing. Bragging rights. Brag to whom? Beats me. I just know I'm helping solve the Covid-19 problem right now. (That was me bragging.)


2 comments:

Margaret (Peggy or Peg too) said...

Out of all this new information I gleaned that you lost bookmarks and extensions when chrome was reset. Hence the reason I will not update my browser. I fear exactly that. It keeps wanting me to.

MarkD60 said...

I bought a XPS 13, and installed only portable apps on it. Works quite well. My wife is using it now to "work from home" and has loaded it up...