NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Folding@home

Folding@Home (also known as FAH or F@H) is a distributed computing project designed to perform computationally intensive simulations of protein folding and other molecular dynamics. It was launched on October 1, 2000, and is currently managed by the Pande Group, within Stanford University's chemistry department, under the supervision of Professor Vijay Pande. Folding@home is one of the world's largest distributed computing projects.^[1] The goal of the project is "to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases."^[2] Image File history File links Folding@home. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1024x576, 434 KB) Folding@Home running on a PS3 taken from here [1] the image on that page is higher resolution, and not copied on Wikipedia due to Fair use guidelines. ... The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATIONÂ®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ... 3D computer graphics (in contrast to 2D computer graphics) are graphics that utilize a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images. ... Software design is the process that starts from a problem for which there is currently no acceptable (software) solution, and ends when such a solution has been created. ... Vijay S. Pande is currently an Associate Professor in the Chemistry Department at Stanford University. ... â€œSoftware developmentâ€ redirects here. ... â€œStanfordâ€ redirects here. ... Code complete redirects here. ... Code complete redirects here. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... In computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. ... A cross-platform (or platform independent) programming language, software application or hardware device works on more than one system platform (e. ... Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function, type, or field of use. ... Distributed computing is a method of computer processing in which different parts of a program run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network. ... A software license is a legal agreement which may take the form of a proprietary or gratuitous license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software. ... It has been suggested that closed source be merged into this article or section. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... Distributed computing is a method of computer processing in which different parts of a program run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network. ... Protein folding is the process by which a protein assumes its characteristic functional shape or tertiary structure, also known as the native state. ... Molecular dynamics (MD) is a form of computer simulation wherein atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a period of time under known laws of physics, giving a view of the motion of the atoms. ... is the 274th day of the year (275th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... â€œStanfordâ€ redirects here. ... For other uses, see Chemistry (disambiguation). ... Vijay S. Pande is currently an Associate Professor in the Chemistry Department at Stanford University. ...

Accurate simulations of protein folding and misfolding enable the scientific community to better understand the development of many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, BSE (mad cow disease), cancer, Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis and other aggregation-related diseases. [2] More fundamentally, understanding the process of protein folding — how biological molecules assemble themselves into a functional state — is one of the outstanding problems of molecular biology. So far, the Folding@home project has successfully simulated folding in the 5-10 microsecond range — a time scale thousands of times longer than it was previously thought possible to model.^[3] The mad cow Disease </gallery>== The mad cow Disease == Classic image of a cow with BSE. A notable feature of such disease is the inability (of the infected animal) to stand. ... Cancer is a class of diseases or disorders characterized by uncontrolled division of cells and the ability of these to spread, either by direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion, or by implantation into distant sites by metastasis (where cancer cells are transported through the bloodstream or lymphatic system). ... To help compare orders of magnitude of different times this page lists times between 10âˆ’6 seconds and 10âˆ’5 seconds (1. ...

As of June 25, 2007, fifty scientific research papers have been published using the project's work.^[4] A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report dated October 22, 2002 states that Folding@home distributed simulations of protein folding are demonstrably accurate.^[5] is the 176th day of the year (177th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. ... A Corner of Main Quad The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, or simply Illinois), is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious campus in the University of Illinois system. ... is the 295th day of the year (296th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... Protein folding is the process by which a protein assumes its characteristic functional shape or tertiary structure, also known as the native state. ...

On September 16, 2007, the Folding@Home project officially attained a speed higher than one petaFLOPS, becoming the first computing system of any kind to do so, although it had briefly peaked above one petaFLOPS in March 2007.^[6]^[7]. In comparison, the fastest supercomputer in the world (as of September 2007, IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer) peaks at around 360 teraFLOPS. For other uses, see Flop. ... A supercomputer is a computer that led the world (or was close to doing so) in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. ... For other uses, see IBM (disambiguation) and Big Blue. ... This article is about the supercomputer. ...

How it works

Folding@Home does not rely on powerful supercomputers for its data processing; instead, the primary contributors to the Folding@home project are many hundreds of thousands of personal computer users who have installed a small client program. The client will, at the user's choice, run in the background, utilizing otherwise unused CPU power, or run as a screensaver only while the user is away. In most modern personal computers, the CPU is rarely used to its full capacity at all times; the Folding@Home client takes advantage of this unused processing power. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... A supercomputer is a computer that led the world (or was close to doing so) in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation, at the time of its introduction. ... For other uses, see Data entry clerk. ... In computing, a client is a system that accesses a (remote) service on another computer by some kind of network. ... A computer program is a collection of instructions that describe a task, or set of tasks, to be carried out by a computer. ... The background, in the context of computer software processes, refers in general to processes that are run with a relatively low priority, require little or no input, and generate a minimum of output. ... â€œCPUâ€ redirects here. ...

The Folding@Home client periodically connects to a server to retrieve "work units," which are packets of data upon which to perform calculations. Each completed work unit is then sent back to the server. As data integrity is a major concern for all distributed computing projects, all work units are validated through the use of a 2048 bit digital signature. In information technology, a server is an application or device that performs services for connected clients as part of a client-server architecture. ... In cryptography, a digital signature or digital signature scheme is a type of asymmetric cryptography used to simulate the security properties of a signature in digital, rather than written, form. ...

The Folding@Home client utilizes modified versions of four molecular simulation programs for calculation: TINKER, GROMACS, AMBER, and CPMD.^[8] Tinker may mean: Tinker (profession), the profession of metalsmith To tinker, verb. ... GROMACS (GROningen MAchine for Chemical Simulations) is a molecular dynamics simulation package originally developed in the University of Groningen, now maintained and extended at different places, including the University of Uppsala, University of Stockholm and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. ... For other uses, see Amber (disambiguation). ... The Car-Parrinello Molecular Dynamics, better known as CPMD, is a package for performing ab-initio quantum mechanical molecular dynamics (MD) using pseudopotentials and a plane wave basis set. ...

Contributors to Folding@Home may have user names used to keep track of their contributions. Each user may be running the client on one or more CPUs; for example, a user with two computers could run the client on both of them. Users may also contribute under one or more team names; many different users may join together to form a team. Contributors are assigned a score indicating the number and difficulty of completed work units. Rankings and other statistics are posted to the Folding@Home website. Note: to create a user account for Wikipedia, go to the login page. ... For the River in the North-East of England, see River Team. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML...

Participation

Shortly after breaking the 200,000 active CPU count on September 20, 2005, the Folding@home project celebrated its fifth anniversary on October 1, 2005. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 Ã— 558 pixelsFull resolution (975 Ã— 680 pixel, file size: 41 KB, MIME type: image/png) I created this chart (image) myself using data compiled over the course of 10 months. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 Ã— 558 pixelsFull resolution (975 Ã— 680 pixel, file size: 41 KB, MIME type: image/png) I created this chart (image) myself using data compiled over the course of 10 months. ... ... The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATIONÂ®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ... is the 263rd day of the year (264th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 274th day of the year (275th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The Folding@Home project has received computational results from over 2.3 million devices^[9] over the course of its time.

Interest and participation in the project has grown steadily since its launch. The number of active devices participating in the project increased substantially after receiving much publicity during the launch of their High Performance clients for both ATi Graphics Cards and the Playstation 3. ATI may stand for: ATI Technologies Inc. ... A video card, also referred to as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, graphics card, and numerous other terms, is an item of personal computer hardware whose function is to generate and output images to a display. ... The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATIONÂ®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ...

As of May 31, 2007 the peak speed of the project overall has reached over 1 PFLOPS.^[10] is the 151st day of the year (152nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... ...

Google & Folding@home

There used to be cooperation between Folding@home and Google Labs in the form of Google Compute. Google Compute supported Folding@home during its early stage — when Folding@home had ~10,000 active CPUs. At that time, a boost of 20,000 machines was very significant. Today the project has a large number of active CPUs and the number of new clients joining Google Compute was very low (most people opted for the Folding@home client instead), so it was discontinued. The Google Compute clients also had certain limits: they could only run the TINKER core and had limited naming and team options. Folding@home is no longer supported on Google Toolbar, and even the old Google Toolbar client will not work.^[11] This article is about the corporation. ... Google Compute is a separately downloadable add-on for the Google Toolbar which allows participation in a distributed computing project to help scientific research. ...

High performance platforms

Image File history File links F@H_FLOPS_per_client. ... Image File history File links F@H_FLOPS_per_client. ... â€œGPUâ€ redirects here. ... Uptime is a measure of the time a computer system has been up and running. ...

Graphical processing units

As of October 2, 2006, the Folding@home GPU client has been released into the public as a beta test. After 9 days of processing from the Beta client the Folding@home project had received 31 teraFLOPS of computational performance from just 450 X1900 GPUs, averaging at over 70x the performance of current CPU submissions.^[1] is the 275th day of the year (276th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Software development stages In computer programming, development stage terminology expresses how the development of a piece of software has progressed and how much further development it may require. ... For other uses, see Flop. ... ATIs R520 core (codenamed Fudo) is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9. ...

PlayStation 3

Stanford announced in August 2006 that a folding client was available to run on the Sony PlayStation 3.^[12] The intent was that gamers would be able to contribute to the project by merely "contributing electricity," leaving their PlayStation 3 consoles running the client while not playing games. PS3 firmware version 1.60 (released on Thursday, March 22, 2007) allows for Folding@home software, a 50 MB download, to be used on the PS3.^[13] A peak output of the project at 990 teraFLOPS was achieved on 25 March, 2007, at which time the number of FLOPS from each PS3 as reported by Stanford fell, reducing the overall speed rating of those machines by 50%. This had the effect of bumping down the overall project speed to the mid 700 range and increasing the number of active PS3's required to achieve a petaFLOPS level to around 60,000. Lately, the console accounts for about 60% of all teraFLOPS. On April 25, 2007, Sony announced that a new version of Folding@home would be released the next day. The new version would improve folding performance beyond the current capacity, far beyond even the 400 teraFLOPS previously reached by PS3 users.^[14] The release led to the breaking of the petaFLOP barrier for the first time by any computing system in history on September 15, 2007. ^[15]^[16] Guinness World Record will recognize Folding@Home as the most powerful distributed computing network, largely in part, thanks to the PS3.^[17] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... is the 81st day of the year (82nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATIONÂ®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ... is the 81st day of the year (82nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 84th day of the year (85th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 115th day of the year (116th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... ... is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Multi-core processing client

As more modern CPUs are being released the migration to multiple cores is becoming more adopted by the public, the Pande Group is adding the symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support to the Folding@home client as well in hopes of capturing the additional processing power. On November 13, 2006, the beta SMP Folding@home clients for x86-64 Linux and x86 Mac OS X have been released. The beta win32 SMP Folding@home client is out as well, and a 32-bit Linux client is currently in development.^[18] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Diagram of an Intel Core 2 dual core processor, with CPU-local Level 1 caches, and a shared, on-die Level 2 cache. ... Diagram of an Intel Core 2 dual core processor, with CPU-local Level 1 caches, and a shared, on-die Level 2 cache. ... Symmetric multiprocessing, or SMP, is a multiprocessor computer architecture where two or more identical processors are connected to a single shared main memory. ... is the 317th day of the year (318th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The AMD64 or x86-64 is a 64-bit processor architecture invented by AMD. It is a superset of the x86 architecture, which it natively supports. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... Mac OS X (IPA: ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ...

Folding@home teams

A typical Folding@home user, running the client on a single PC, will likely not be ranked high on the list of contributors. However, if the user were to join a team, they would add the points they receive to a larger collective. Teams work by using the combined score of all their members. Thus, teams are ranked much higher than individual submitters. Rivalries between teams create friendly competition that benefits the folding community. Many teams publish their own stats, so members can have intra-team competitions for top spots. Teams offer no real benefits other than ones of self-gratification, and possibly extra contributions (to add to the teams rank).^[19]

Source code

The Folding@home project does not make the project source code available to the public, citing security and integrity concerns. At the same time, the majority of the scientific codes used by the FAH (ex. Cosm, GROMACS, TINKER, AMBER, CPMD, BrookGPU) are largely OSS or under similar licenses. GROMACS (GROningen MAchine for Chemical Simulations) is a molecular dynamics simulation package originally developed in the University of Groningen, now maintained and extended at different places, including the University of Uppsala, University of Stockholm and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. ... Tinker may mean: Tinker (profession), the profession of metalsmith To tinker, verb. ... For other uses, see Amber (disambiguation). ... The Car-Parrinello Molecular Dynamics, better known as CPMD, is a package for performing ab-initio quantum mechanical molecular dynamics (MD) using pseudopotentials and a plane wave basis set. ... BrookGPU is the Stanford University Graphics groups compiler and runtime implementation of the Brook stream programming language for using modern graphics hardware for non-graphical, or general purpose computations. ... Open source software is computer software which source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the Open_source_definition. ...

Encyclopedia > Folding@home

Contents