What's folding?

[jouyang]

all, this may sound stupid but what's folding. I've being reading threads on cpu section and everyone seems to be part of a folding team. What do u guys actually do?

thanks,
~joy

[HaTE]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=108580
this thread will tell you all the info about it

[I.M.O.G.]

We run a client program which obtains small work packets, then processes it, and returns results to a central server which collects data. This work is done by our PC's during normally idle CPU cycles - the client program only operates during cycles which would normally go unused.

Thats what we do.

Check out the foldling link in my sig to find out why we do it. We hope it can help our families and friends in the future.

[MLMIB]

idea behind it is that scientists need to know how certain protiens react with each other(or misreact in the case of cancer) but they can't build a machine to compute it on their own, and if they tried it'd take to long. so they split the big complex problems into smaller ones that our computers compute, one packet at a time, before sending back to them. they use this data to help find cures and understand how diseases work

here is a list of the papers they've written on the data collected.... http://folding.stanford.edu/papers.html

so yea, if you would like to help us find a cure for cancer and other diseases(they working on things like anthrax at one point) than let me, or any of my fellow folders know(it'd be best to list cpu 'n ram) and we'll be able to help you

also, you don't need to worry about it affecting your gaming. the folding client runs in a lowest proriety setting, meaning that the only resources it uses are the ones you don't. if your using only 1% of the cpu while reading this message, it'll use the other 99%, but once you need to reload graphics when u start to navigate, you get those resources back right away. I run it while gaming and don't notice at all.

[TalRW]

The only way it would effect performance at all is if you enable big packets, those take extra resources (RAM mainly) but you would only get those is you specifically request them (by enabling big packets and adv methods) but by folding those you get bonus points.