Hi,
I am posting this thread to recruit more unicyclists to team 13392 (CPUnicycles) for Folding@Home. Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/) is a distributed computing project to learn about protein folding run by a group at Stanford University.
In a nutshell, there are certain problems out there that require a massive amount of time to do on a computer. Rather than doing the problem (ie simulating how proteins fold) on a few supercomputers, it’s actually possible to split up the problems and send chunks of work to computers of volunteers from all over the world! That’s pretty much what distributed computing is about.
That’s where you come into the picture! While CPUnicycles is doing quite well, we haven’t been moving up in the standings lately. We’re currently in 123 place (out of 31968 teams!). It would be fabulous if you could join and help us out. It feels pretty good to contribute to the F@H project too.
Just like the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie, SET IT AND FORGET IT! The consoles are designed to only use CPU cycles that you aren’t using. If you’re doing anything on your computer, the immediate task at hand will be given priority. If you hide the icon on your taskbar, you won’t even know that the program is running.
If you’re interested, please go to http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html and download a client. For Windows users, I would recommend the graphical client or the text-only console. I have never used the consoles or clients for other operating systems, so hopefully someone else can comment on that. If you don’t understand an option it gives during the setup, you’ll be ok leaving it at its default value.
The important thing to do is enter 13392 when it asks you which team you want to join.
However, for maximum performance, check out http://www.maximumpc.com/features/feature_2003-06-10.html
Tip #1: Don’t expect to see work units complete by the second. They often take a while to do, so once you start the console, you might not expect to see anything happen for up to an hour.
Tip #2: When I first started on the team back in March, I felt pretty discouraged because I never seemed to make much progress on my work units. It’s probably mentally unhealthy to check on the # of work units many times a day.
It’s also a lot of fun to see how you match up against fellow CPUniclists close to you in the standings. Mark_Wiggins–I will surpass you yet!!! (actually, it’s pretty hopeless for me since my summer job will end soon, and I’ll lose out on a processor. oh well)
Even if you don’t have a fast computer, it’d be great if you could join anyway. Every little bit helps.
Here are some interesting links:
http://folding.stanford.edu/science.html – What the project is about, and how it works
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=13392 - Team statistics
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&t=13392 - Better team statistics
