The Most Powerful Supercomputer In The World Is Now Distributed – Folding@home

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Crypto users are accustomed to the power of distributed networks. But lately, the power of the distributed computational network Folding@home rose so much that it overcomes the TOP 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.

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Distributed Power

Folding@home is one of the popular distributed processing projects that allows users all over the world to participate. It was created in the year 2000 at the American Stanford University. Since then, volunteers from all over the world joined that freely give them computation capacity to simulate how proteins fold. Such simulations are incredibly demanding but also incredibly useful for many types of research such as research of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and many other serious illnesses.

A community of fans was quickly formed around Folding@home. Until recently, about 30 thousand of these fans were always providing their computers towards the project. But then the COVID-19 pandemic came. Luckily, not everyone believed that it is just another flue. In fact, many took COVID-19 seriously and want to help save the world even in quarantine.

When COVID-19 appeared, Folding@home was in the frontlines of simulations. And people really wanted to help. In recent weeks, roughly 700,000 new users joined Folding@home. And a few days ago the computational power of Folding@home reached a stunning 2.4 exaFLOPS making it an exascale supercomputer and by far the most powerful one on this planet. In fact, Folding@home is now more powerful than all TOP 500 supercomputers together. The power of distributed networks is incredible.

Folding@home is all about the special structure of proteins which is very important for how the proteins function in the real world. The pandemic projects of Folding@home are focusing on various proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus but most on the popular glycoprotein S (spike) that makes up the famous “corona” of the coronaviruses which the viruses use to bond to their host cells. These spikes reminded the scientists from Folding@home of the demonic villain Demogorgon from Stranger Things so they used his name as a nickname for the spike.

And if you wanted to simulate how the mouth of Demogorgon opens on your average computer then you would have to wait for about a hundred years. But the distributed exascale network Folding@home is just destroying these simulations. But they are also focusing on other things such as how possible treatments for the coronavirus affect other functions of the body or how the coronavirus infiltrates the host cells.

It doesn't matter whether your computer is slow and old or whether you spend thousands of dollars on making the most powerful beast of a PC. Anyone can help. Just join Folding@home

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