The current COVID-19 pandemic is a terrible thing. Thankfully brains much larger than yours or mine are working tirelessly to understand the virus better and come up with a solution to the problem.
While most of us are sat at home watching Netflix there is an operation under foot to crunch through as muich data as possible in the hope of finding viable treatment options for the virus.
The Folding@Home project is run by Stamford University and seeks to use huge amounts of computing power to simulate the folding of protein molecules, which is an important part of understanding the virus.
Where does this huge amount of computing power come from? You and me.
The way the folding at home project works is to use the spare computing power of the average home PC to help crunch the numbers necessary. To do this you install an application from the Folding@Home website, which sites quietly in the background and processes information sent to it by the Folding@Home servers. Once it’s crunched the numbers and come up with the solution, it fires the data back at the servers where it is logged and analysed.
Since the COVID-19 crisis kicked off many media outlets have picked up on the Folding@Home project, to the point where it now has more computing power at its disposal than the worlds top 15 supercomputers combined.
If you’re feeling a little helpless and you’d like to contribute to the project, then I highly recommend that you head over to the Folding@Home website and download the client for your machine now.