The BigBlueBall Folding@Home Team

[WhiteMateria]

Originally Posted by WhiteMateria (BigBlueBall Forums)

In short Folding@Home uses the power of your own computer's idle CPU cycles in to help find cures for certain diseases.

Originally Posted by Support 1 (AMD Forums)

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.

The current list of projects include:

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Huntington's Disease
• Cancer & p53
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta
• Parkinson's Disease
• Ribosome & antibiotics

Before a protien can perform it's funtion it will go through a process known as folding. But alas: What happens if a protien folds incorrectly? Serious consiquences can emerge and that is just not good thing. Therefore biologists have the need to simulate what shape the protien will be under different folds.

Currently I fold for Team Forums.AMD.com since I have an AMD chip in my system. However if a certain forum with 42,400+ members were to take on this challenge with its own team we could all fold for a greater good. In addition I am currently working on a behometh large protien that will take me about 4 days to fold. It will be donated to the BigBlueBall team.

Consider that if you already leave your computer on 24/7 the expense to help cure diseases is point moot. For just the cost of the electricity to run the computer one can help in the fight to save lives! Consider the many hours you spend on your IM clients chatting to people. This is an excellent time the Folding@Home client can run in the background since most chat clients require very little CPU power. In fact since the program runs in the background at a low priority one can even fold while gaming. It will simply just use what ever CPU cycles are left and fold at a slower rate but every little bit helps. As you might have guessed the folding process will be fastest while one is not using their computer, but if you leave it on 24/7 anyway these can be use as hours of peak folding perfomance.

A subforum dedicated to this project for Team IM Folding@BigBlueBall.com would be going the extra distance in helping get more people onboard for a worthy cause. Here is an example from the AMD forums...
AMD Forums -> Distributed Computing

One may read more about folding from the site itself!
Folding@Home homepage
Folding@Home Distributed Computing

Client download
Download Folding@Home

FAQ:

Q: Aren't the supercomputers that currently fold enough already?
A: No! While the folding process may happen in a few microseconds in real time, simulating this process on a computer is by far much more time consuming. To give an idea of just how much work is needed consider this...

1/1 millionth of a second = 1 microsecond
1/1 billionth of a second = 1 nanasecond

You need a very long series of computations to simulate the folding of a single protein. In fact it might take a supercomputer all day just to fold a protien for 1 nanasecond while the real life process goes on in the microsecond range. There is still much left to be desired in terms of gaining computational power to decrease this time gap. The more computers (processors) that join in the effort - the more we can bridge this gap. Your computer will be working together with many other computers to create a virtual supercomputer!

Final thoughts:

Other distributed computing projects exist such as Seti@Home which analyzes radio telescope data for signs of extraterrestrial life. However be forwarned that this is certain...

Originally Posted by WhiteMateria

"The aliens will come only after mankind has made the health and well being of all humans their personal responsibility! As it stands now if this planet were to be destroyed by them it could not happen to a better generation."

I see a few signed on members have read this thread and keep coming back to it. A quick reply on your part would show and help spread support for Team IM Folding@BigBlueBall.com I was folding the entire time this post was in the making.

EDIT:

I have gone ahead and created the team for this since I got no replies for support. This will make it easier on everyone as they simply have to input the team number in the client.

Team stats:
'IM Folding@BigBlueBall.com'
Team #51870
Folding@Home team stats

Simply input the number 51870 as your team along with your own unique username and you are set. I thought this would be a great name as a pun for both I'm and the shorthand for Instant Messenger. It can be changed over to Jeff's email at any time pending his request via PM.

[Jeff]

I think this is a very cool and noble idea. I'm going to sign-up, and encourage others to do the same, putting those unused CPU cycles to use, working on a good cause!

Props to WhiteMateria for getting the ball rolling!

[WhiteMateria]

Hurray! Thanks Jeff!

Determine the # of points the work unit will be worth here.
Currently Running Projects Stats
WUs are assigned somewhat a random however the program does have a few options to control which types will be assigned to your client.
-> Large WUs (greater than 5MB) or smaller ones
-> WUs with deadlines, no deadlines, or no preference
However one cannot simply pick and choose or at least I've not seen it done yet.

Currently I am working on project 1488
p1488_Protein in POPC

# of Atoms: 77094
Preferred (days): 48.00 days
Final deadline (days): 127 days
Credit: 459.00
Frames: 0
Code: GROMACS33

This is one of the larger WUs BTW as it has a credit of over 450+. It might take several days to fold this particular protien. In fact I'm thinking about donating this to the IM Folding@BigBlueBall team to put us on the board.

For those who start folding or who already do fold it would be fun to post and see what protien WUs you got. Also I am just curious as to which team you fold for if you already do fold.

[Jeff]

I downloaded the visual client (there is also a text-only version). It's pretty cool to watch. I've attached a screenshot with my current folding progress.

[Quiksilver]

I remember Jeff posting Folding@Home for the SETI project a really long time ago, and I think it was me that made the team called BigBlueBall. I did a little search and found the team number, so I don't know if you want to join the one Jeff made or the one actually called BigBlueBall. The number is 40580 for Team BigBlueBall, so join if you want =)

[WhiteMateria]

I meant to edit this post... Not add a new one.

[WhiteMateria]

I took a look at Jeff's screenshot and I noticed the team number that he put in was 51870 so we'll stick with
IM Folding@BigBlueBall.com. One can change their team number at anytime before the WU is finished so if you are like at 99% or less please change it to 51870.
Currently I run the text only version under Linux.
Jeff it looks as if you will be the first to get a WU up on the board for team
IM Folding@BigBlueBall.com
EDIT: Confirmed that Jeff has recieved credit for his WU on the stats page.
Team stats page
You have only about 14 minutes left of folding one of the smaller WUs at about 1min 55secs average time per frame. This is actually an impressive time considering that proteins under the AMBER code cannot utilize the 3DNow or SSE optimization boosts - Which brand, model, and chipset is your CPU? The other question I have for you is this: Since you have folded one whole WU did it interfere with your day to day activities on your computer at all while running or did you hardly notice it? I think others would want to know who might be a little worried about this before running it.

The current WU you are working on is as follows:

p1809_Collagen_POG10new_refolding

# of Atoms: 1116
Preferred (days): 30.00 days
Final deadline (days): 44 days
Credit: 153.00
Frames: 100 but the screenshot says 500
Code: AMBER

You will recieve 153 credits for this current WU BTW. The size of the WU will determine the credits you recieve. As it stands now the WU I'm folding is at 32% cause it is a huge one. It will be worth 459 credits when complete.

[Quiksilver]

I switched to IM Folding@BigBlueBall but I don't show up on the team stats page. The only person I see in the team is Jeff himself. When I run a search for my username (quiksilver) I get several results. Do you think that the problem may be that my username is used by other people and therefore doesn't show up or something else?

[Spike]

Wow, Jeff, look at that, you can even print yourself out a nifty certificate! Heh!

[WhiteMateria]

A team member wont go up on the team stats board until they have sucessfully completed a WU for that team and the points credited have been updated on the site. Since my own WU is only 53% done it will take another couple of days to finish up and for me to even show up on the board myself.