Welcome! Folding at Home is a distributed computing program that aims to find solutions to Alzheimer's disease, cancer, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and others that relate to or depend on the biological workhorses in our bodies - proteins.
Distributed computing has been around for a while in several forms, but quite simply it is one large project that uses the collaborative input from many computers around the world. In this case, a central server at Stanford University sends a small problem for your home computer to solve - which chews on it for a few hours or even days, and then sends back the results. The ongoing process allows the university to solve complex problems by way of very small pieces. If you restart you computer and restart the program, it will pick up where it last left off.
One of the first distributed computing projects was by SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, where home computers sifted through the data received by a radio telescope, hunting for coherent communication from distant planets. Other projects include computing the next digit of Pi: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950... They are well over 30 million digits now. Enough background - I'll tell you what you need to know, but the F@H home page and FAQ are here: Folding @ Home
Ok so you're thinking you don't want to slow down your computer with another program... Well, below you can see that the CPU stops calculating when you open another program (left), in this case it was Word. When I closed Word, it kicked back into calculations. It truly does take a back seat when you need to work, and you'll notice there is no change in RAM use (system memory). RAM is the stuff that is usually at fault for "My slow computer". If you have a dual core processor, you can set the program to run on one of the two CPUs all by itself, leaving the other for work (right).
The basics - it's very small, it's idiot-proof, it runs in the background, and won't slow you down.
1. Download the program from their website or here. Remember where you save it. It's tiny ~ 370kb.
2. Install the program by running the executable you saved. It uses a standard windows interface.
3. Run & configure the program. Put in your name, this gives you credit for your work.
The team number 51286 is for USAF ACSC Students. The US Air Force does not officially sponsor this team in any way. It was started, and is contributed to, by Air Command And Staff College students beginning with AY07. It is just a small contribution in our pledge to serve the community - in this case, the largest of communities. To view the team membership and statistics for USAF ACSC Students, click here.
Short version - uncheck everything on the connection page.
Long version: If you leave the first block checked - it will ask for internet access repeatedly.
If it can't connect to the internet you might try "Use Internet Explorer Settings".
Proxy servers are for business networks - not home. Leave that stuff unchecked.
In this case it's also set to get large problem sets, you might leave that unchecked too.
You don't have to have a display of what's happening (top of this page). It can run in the background with just an icon in your system tray (by the clock). If you want to see a graphical interface, this page lets you choose what you'll see. I recommend you set the redraw rate to the far left so as not to task your graphics card. In fact, I recommend not even having the graphic displayed. You can put whatever title you want shown in the middle.
Last one. This is the most important page. Set the core priority to Lowest Possible (unlike in my picture). I run this on a machine that does almost nothing else so I set mine higher. Set the CPU percentage to something around half way to 70% or so. I run my CPU at 80% (below), and as shown above, it will back off when you start other work.
If you don't leave your computer on all the time you might want to place this in the startup menu so it comes on when you power the PC up. If you are curious just what your computer is doing, look for the project number in the display, then click here to find a description.
Project 2096
After some more changes to the new v1.90 GB Gromacs core we check the capabilities by folding the A21 and the Fs peptides under different conditions (the force field, the viscosity and the dielectic constants) in order to understand and optimize their impact. So these are very similar to the previous 2071-2074 and 2086-2089 projects.
It's a noble project that won't cost you anything but those spare CPU cycles, and may just save someone in your family some day. Well that's it - I recommend you visit their homepage to read all about it and see some of the things they have accomplished and discovered. Folding @ Home They also have a forum that you can post questions or get to know the designers better. I've spoken with Dr. Pande before - he's very personable and truly out to make a difference in helping to cure these diseases.
Thanks for checking it out!
Maj "Lex" Trsek
