Folding@home is using crowd-sourced computing power to help combat the coronavirus and that power has crossed into absurd territory. This protein-folding simulation software has been active in medical research for over a decade and it's now a bright spot in the global pandemic conversation.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project used to simulate protein folding. The project, which is available for free to anyone, asks users to install software on a computer so it can leverage the user's processing power to calculate data. It's something like Bitcoin mining except it can save lives. In simple terms, the data itself involves calculating all the ways a protein molecule could move over time because that movement impacts the shape of the molecule, and that shape has a strong bearing on how the molecule will ultimately function. Charting these movements requires a staggering number of calculations (literally billions), so Folding@home users are taking on some of that workload. The information gleaned from these movements can then be used by biologists to determine how things like viruses will function, and how to treat them. For more information on ways to get involved, check the following article.
The Folding@home project has been used in cancer research going back to the advent of broadband internet access, and it has also aided in research on Ebola: it recently led to the discovery of an unexpected way to treat Ebola with drugs, which was previously considered impossible. Now that Folding@home has been unleashed on COVID-19, its creators have pushed for the many PC owners spending time at home due to social distancing to step up and lend their computing resources to the project. Step up they have, as the Folding@home Twitter account recently revealed the project has "crossed the exaFLOP barrier". This feat of computing means they've reached enough computing power to calculate 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's one quintillion) floating-point operations per second, which, according to a reply on Twitter, is more power than exists in the top 103 supercomputers on Earth combined.
This is a staggering feat considering the immense power required to do large-scale FLOP calculations – for those familiar with the term "teraflop", an exaflop is one million teraflops. It's also a great sign of comradery amongst us Earthlings. Folding@home is an easy process to start, it runs relatively unobtrusively, and it can even be a little fun, but it's still a surprise to see so many people taking the effort to help with the project.
Throughout this process, tech enthusiasts and tech brands in the PC space have taken strides to promote Folding@home and get more people on board. Companies like Nvidia are sharing Folding@home leaderboards to drive friendly competition and acknowledge individual efforts. The combination of this new social media word of mouth and people's strong desire to help end the coronavirus are the primary factors for the project's recent explosion of popularity, and hopefully, this trend continues. Way to go, humans.
Source: Folding@home / Twitter