Author | Sun Mingyuan
Title map | Folding @ Home
A dozen years ago, many people had this experience: they drove several QQ hooks at the same time, in order to upgrade the sun next to the avatar business card as soon as possible (Level) ; later online games have also developed similar routines to gain experience or gold coins by hanging up. Regardless of the form, it is nothing more than the user’s use of electricity charges to replace some small profits, and related companies are also using this method to promote daily living data.
Ten years ago, Bitcoin appeared, and people saw huge benefits in it, so they madly purchased hardware for “mining.” Because the graphics card is the main “hashing power”, and the manufacturer did not predict that the “miner” is so crazy, it once caused the price of the graphics card in the market to double, but still in short supply.
Just at the same time as the “absurd” thing happened, there was a “hang-up” project that started in 2000-Folding @ home ( Hereafter collectively referred to as F @ h) , but little known, it is this project that gives each of us the opportunity to participate in the team of “conquering the new crown virus” or even “saving the world”.
Folding @ home
F @ h is a distributed computing project used to simulate the molecular dynamics of proteins. Its initial focus was to observe and analyze the “protein folding” problem, but it has gradually been extended to solve many biomedical problems, such as Az Haimer disease, cancer, cystic fibrosis, COVID-19, Ebola virus, etc.
The project was established on October 1, 2000 by Professor Vijay Pande of Stanford University ’s Pande Laboratory, and was handed over to Dr. Greg Bowman of the University of Washington, St. George in 2019 (Pande ’s former student) leader. Since the establishment of the project, the development has been rapid. Many students and working scientists have joined the ranks of project volunteers to help the project party translate web pages and spread the word. At present, through the assistance of the F @ h project, a total of 223 academic papers have been born.