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Help Nvidia with coronavirus research!

  • March 14, 2020 10:41 AM PDT

    Hello Fantheons, we wanted to share this with you: Nvidia is putting out a call to PC gamers everywhere to download the Folding@home application and start putting their spare clock cycles toward advancing humanity's scientific knowledge of coronavirus.
    https://www.gamesradar.com/amp/nvidias-calling-on-gaming-pc-owners-to-put-their-systems-to-work-fighting-covid-19/



    This post was edited by Deleted Member at March 14, 2020 10:44 AM PDT
    • 557 posts
    March 14, 2020 4:08 PM PDT

    Hi, Brasse.

    (Edit:  This project is not just for NVidia owners.   AMD is supported on Windows and Linux.)

    Legacy of Ages would like to challenge other Pantheon guilds to form their own F@H teams and take this on seriously as a community.

    For anyone who would like to join in our efforts LoA is team #238419.

     

    Celandor
    Legacy of Ages Recruiting Officer


    This post was edited by Celandor at March 14, 2020 7:36 PM PDT
    • 50 posts
    March 14, 2020 4:19 PM PDT

    Excellent idea! I have downloaded and joined the team!

    • 1992 posts
    March 14, 2020 5:28 PM PDT

    A great idea yes. I've heard of them before, and went there intending to sign up.

    Sadly, in looking over folding@home's requirements it appears that my graphics card is too old and feeble to help them.

    I'll just have to help the cheering section :)

    • 557 posts
    March 14, 2020 5:30 PM PDT

    Heya, Jothany.   You can contribute via CPU.   If your system sits idle overnight or perhaps while you're at work, it could be slowly chugging away on COVID-19 jobs.   Every little bit helps.  There are also clients for MacOS and Linux.   I used to run it on multiple headless Linux servers with great effect.

    Worst case, download the client and see if the settings show a slot for your CPU.  My clunky old Mac only supports CPU with the current client, but it chugs along.


    This post was edited by Celandor at March 14, 2020 5:37 PM PDT
    • 1992 posts
    March 14, 2020 7:07 PM PDT

    Cool, thanks.

    Reading the FAQs I thought my system had to meet both the CPU and GPU requirements. My GPU is the oldest part of my system by far, the CPU is definitely light years ahead of their stated minimum. I'll get the client and see what it says.

    • 557 posts
    March 14, 2020 7:22 PM PDT

    Don't be discouraged if you install the client and it just sits there idle.   If you notice that the work and collection server IP addresses are 0.0.0.0, that usually means there's no jobs for you to work on for that particular slot type.

    COVID-19 jobs are getting priority when you select "Any" from the preference drop-down.   Worst case scenario is there's nothing to do at all or you work on folding for another worthy project related to Cancer, Alzheimers, Huntingdon's or Parkinson's.   When Stanford submits more work to the queue, the COVID-19 jobs are back at the top of the priority list.

    You can tell if your client is actively working on COVID-19 by looking at the Project # on the job.

    CPU jobs will be numbered 14328, 14329, 14530, 14531.
    GPU jobs will be from 11741 to 11751

     

    Also worth noting, this isn't strictly for NVidia owners.  AMD GPUs are supported via OpenCL on Windows and Linux.


    This post was edited by Celandor at March 14, 2020 7:33 PM PDT
    • 1992 posts
    March 14, 2020 7:31 PM PDT

    Thanks for the advice and encouragement.

    Having learned that installing/configuring new software is a task that I do much better in the morning (after coffee) rather than in the evening after dinner LOL, I'll be jumping in tomorrow.

    I'll certainly come bug you if I have any questions :)

    • 57 posts
    March 15, 2020 6:02 AM PDT

    The Folding@Home installs fairly easily.  I was up and running in under 5 minutes with the only real interaction being a few settings and setting up an ID.  I added the LoA team number to help represent!


    This post was edited by DaveBowers at March 15, 2020 12:45 PM PDT
    • 62 posts
    March 15, 2020 7:17 AM PDT

    This is great.  I've joined the efforts and also added the LoA team number as well.

    • 7 posts
    March 15, 2020 10:55 AM PDT

    Downloaded and working away.   

    • 557 posts
    March 15, 2020 9:00 PM PDT

    Big thanks to everyone who jumped on board to support this worthy cause thus far.   We're just getting started.

    For anyone interested in more information or seeing the LoA COVID-19 folding team stats, we're trying to post regular updates on our web page at http://legacyofages.com/2020/03/15/pantheon-community-vs-covid-19/ ;  You don't have to be a guild member to join the folding team.

     

    • 1315 posts
    March 16, 2020 6:58 AM PDT

    Tagged myself under the LoA tag too.

    • VR Staff
    • 318 posts
    March 16, 2020 11:51 AM PDT

    I joined and am adding my spare cycles to the cause.

    • 557 posts
    March 18, 2020 10:53 PM PDT

    To all who are participating, again thank you.  

    The Folding@Home stats server is being pummeled by the massive increase in new folder volunteers.    Rather than contribute to the load, we're going to let our team stats page drift out of date while the research team upgrades their capacity.  I would ask that folding team members please refrain from checking your stats until the new server is in place and we can do so reliably without the constant "Bad Gateway" errors.   In the long term, I plan to automate the stats retrieval for the team so I'm not doing manual screenshots.   Unfortunately, the API server is the stats server, so that little project is on hold.

    Your folding work is being accepted by the system and contributing to the research whether the stats server is working or not.  You are getting credit for every WU you submit and that work will be reflected when we're able to get an update in the team totals.

    Currently, after our first week, we have 19 folding participants and are continuing to ramp up our rate of contribution.  I'm happy to see that 25% of the team members came from outside the guild in the general Pantheon community.

    Links are listed 3 posts above this for anyone who wants more information or would like to contribute.   Now is the chance for you to show off just how much horsepower you have in that new gaming rig or perhaps just put that old laptop in the closet to good use.   Whether your contribution is large or small, every work unit we submit moves the researchers closer to their goals.

    For the curious, this is the sort of protein complexity the researchers are asking us to help model.   This screenshot was taken over the weekend on my Mac of a single CPU work unit.   The CPU units are less complex computing tasks than the GPU jobs.

     

     


    This post was edited by Celandor at March 18, 2020 11:20 PM PDT
    • 557 posts
    March 22, 2020 9:45 AM PDT

    Participating in the COVID-19 Folding@Home project is great therapy.   Every time you feel a bit overwhelmed by events, glance at your computer screen and look at the positive contribution you're making to resolve this.

    The researchers have added more server computing resources, so the stats servers are no longer overwhelmed and more work units are getting pushed out for the folding teams to crunch.

    It's really great to see members of the Pantheon community working together.   We have a few rock stars who are really pushing out huge numbers, but it will be the overall contribution of many people, no matter how modest their computer, which will make the difference.

    Keep folding!

    • 557 posts
    March 25, 2020 10:38 AM PDT

    Folding@Home seems to be getting all of the media attention, but there is another place you can donate CPU/GPU cycles in the war against COVID-19.   Check out Rosetta@Home https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/ ;   Rosetta is using BOINC, which was originally part of SETI@Home.   BOINC is used by other major research projects, including the IBM sponsored World Community Grid.    There are clients for PC, Mac, Linux and even Android.

    Where Folding @ Home focuses on pure research to help scientists understand why and how proteins fold, Rosetta looks at the protein endpoints and is focused more on finding a cure. I don't think you can successfully argue that either is better or more important than the other.

    Personally I've found that my system is spending too much time waiting for work from the F@H researchers. With all of the media hype regarding F@H they have seen a 20X increase in the number of volunteers.  I'd like 100% of my excess CPU/GPU to be utilized.   Sitting idle seems wasteful.

    I shut down Folding@Home, replaced it with BOINC connected to Rosetta and was immediately fed a dozen COVID-19 specific tasks.

    For those of you who are finding too much downtime folding, I would urge you to switch to BOINC.  The BOINC client is a bit more polished,  mature and configurable.  It also has a sexy (optional) screen saver for desktop systems.

    For the community side of things, I've also created a "Legacy of Ages" Rosetta team and will also post those stats going forward.

     


    This post was edited by Celandor at March 25, 2020 10:40 AM PDT
    • 57 posts
    March 25, 2020 12:16 PM PDT

    I can't seem to find where to join a team in my account.

     

    • 557 posts
    March 25, 2020 1:15 PM PDT

    Yes, the Rosetta team info is not as obvious as it was with F@H.

    You should be able to join a team from your profile page at  https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/home.php

    It's in the Community section under  "Member of team".

    • 62 posts
    March 26, 2020 7:03 AM PDT

    Thanks, Celandor.  I'll install Rosetta@Home since I am waiting on jobs quite a bit.

    • 57 posts
    March 26, 2020 7:18 AM PDT

    Technically you can run both F@H and Rosetta on the same machine... or like me multiple machines that you may have laying about.  :)

     

    • 557 posts
    March 27, 2020 5:02 PM PDT

    Very true, Dave.  I just pulled my own system from folding as I felt they had plenty of minions in line to do their bidding.

    We are now posting both Rosetta and Folding team results at http://legacyofages.com/2020/03/15/pantheon-community-vs-covid-19/. ; That link also includes information for people who would like to contribute CPU/GPU power to the researchers.

     

    For the curious, once again here is what a typical COVID-19 Rosetta job looks like.

     


    This post was edited by Celandor at March 27, 2020 5:03 PM PDT
    • 557 posts
    April 6, 2020 9:47 PM PDT

    It has been almost four weeks since we started the Pantheon COVID-19 research assist teams.  In that time we've had 24 members of the Pantheon community donate CPU and GPU cycles from more than 60 processors towards Folding@Home and Rosetta@Home in the search for a cure/immunization for COVID-19.  The Pantheon folding team is in the top 1.5%, having contributed over 1,800 model results back to the researchers and racked up a competitive score of over 13 million.   The new Rosetta team has only 6 active contributors but is already in the top 25% and looking for more participants.

    Thank you to everyone who has participated.  Keep connected and keep those processors working on a cure.  The job's not done until the boss mob is dead.

    For those of you still waiting to contribute, it's never too late to start.   While we certainly have some rock stars in terms of individual contributors, the overall effort is as a community.  Every additional CPU/GPU added to the teams makes a difference.  It's not a competition and you don't need any special skills to participate.

    If you want to see the live stats or want to join either the folding or the Rosetta teams please visit http://legacyofages.com/2020/03/15/pantheon-community-vs-covid-19/

    If you don't have a computer that you want to hook into the project but would like to donate financially, you can do so directly to the project leads at the respective universities.

    Folding@Home:
    https://gifts.wustl.edu/med/index.html?other_designation_description=Folding@Home%20(Dr%20Greg%20Bowman,%20Dept%20of%20Biochemistry)&0_d_tr1=71&sc=NG

    (Sorry the VR Forum software won't display this URL correctly.  Just copy/paste the entire URL to your browser.)

    Rosetta@Home:
    https://www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift/?source_typ=3&source=ROSETT

     

    Again thank you to everyone who is working on this while the world is sheltering at home.  Stay safe.

    #communitymatters


    This post was edited by Celandor at April 6, 2020 10:10 PM PDT
    • 196 posts
    April 12, 2020 9:31 AM PDT

    hope that more people hop on this as this will help save everyone from this virus

    • 3016 posts
    April 12, 2020 10:05 AM PDT

    Sounds interesting but a little too techy..over my head.   I will cheer you guys on.   heh It would be wonderful if Covid 19 could be defeated this way..kudos to those that understand and know what they are doing techwise. :)

    Cana