Distributed computing: Folding/Genome/United Devices

Hi there,

Below is a carbon copy of a post I made over at ixyl a while back. I don’t know how many people know about the various projects that aren’t Seti (which I now see as a waste of time when more worthwhile projects can be run), but I’ve been promoting my team since November and so far have amassed the equivalent of over 4 years of processing time on a standard PC. Every little helps - I’m not asking anyone to join the team, but billions of CPU cycles are wasted every day per PC and they could be put to much greater use. Read on!


Distributed computing projects are like a vast supercomputer, comprised of PCs from around the world. When you become involved in the project, your computer becomes a part of the supercomputer, and processes the huge amount of information that such projects deal with, in order to try and find solutions or important information. The project asks you to install a program on your machine, and this will then process (“crunch”) the data when you aren’t using it - this means that even the couple of seconds while you’re reading an e-mail, the program can go through millions of computations. The projects have already proved extremely useful in their chosen field, and that is purely because of the ability of the internet, and its users, to harness the combined processing power of modern PCs, which is otherwise wasted. (around 90% of your CPU time is spent doing nothing)

Please consider running one of the programs below - you’re just wasting electricity otherwise. If you need any advice or help, don’t hesitate to ask me. Below I list the name of the program, the website, the program to download, the team number and statistics (for my teams - University Of Edinburgh), and a brief description of the project. Once you’ve chosen your project, let me know and I’ll write installation instructions.

[size=150]Folding@Home[/size]
Website: folding.stanford.edu
Team Number: 458
Team Stats: folding.stanford.edu
Description: Folding@Home attempts to find out why and how proteins “fold”, in an effort to find cures for diseases like Alzheimers.

[size=150]Genome@Home[/size]
Website: genomeathome.stanford.edu
Download: genomeathome.stanford.edu/download.html
Team Number: 1617077820
Description: Genome@Home is dedicated to deciphering the human genome and DNA structure.

[size=150]Seti@Home[/size]
Website: setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Team Number: 127944
Description: The oldest DC project, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence scours radio telescope data to find evidence of life outside of earth.

If you are running a project, please consider joining the team - not only does this help the team gain recognition, it provides a useful grouping to distinguish us from the hundreds of thousands of other users, and allows us to “compete” against each in a mini-grouping. Get crunching!

(For your information, I would personally recommend the Folding project purely because of its easy of use and running: Genome is a more basic program without graphical support, and UD, while being fantastic in its cause, can take up to 3 days of solid CPU activity before it even completes 1% - and if you turn it off before it’s completed it, it starts again. )

You forgot distributed.net , which hosts the RSA Labs RC5-64 encryption challenge, as well as the Optimal Golomb Rulers [24 and 25] challenges.

Dnet is partnered with UD. The RC5-64 challenge is set to wrap in another 185 days.

809 days and counting… Moo.

It’s certainly not a cure for cancer, but unsecure data can ruin more lives than cancer.