I am a bit confused
- Amy
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The program is literally using your pc to do research on protein folding.
By better understanding how the proteins fold and why they misfold, researchers will be that much closer to finding a cure to these diseases.it uses your free CPU cycles to help understand how proteins are assembled, or folded. The project is put on by Stanford University whose goal is to find out how proteins assemble themselves and why they sometime misfold. This misfolding is related to many serious diseases including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
So some program uses my processor to figure out how protiens fold and misfold??? what does that have to do with my processor?? I don't understand.... Aren't proteins in cells or something? What does that have to do with virtual information? Or is this more like the program Super Pi that calculates pi, is this "problem" that we are trying to solve just a math problem that needs a lot of computing power or what??? I'm in 10th grade here don't confuse me...
And why can't they use one supercomputer instead of hundreds of PC's?
And why can't they use one supercomputer instead of hundreds of PC's?
- Apoptosis
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many thousands of computers do this... Most supercomputers are being used for their main purpose for being around, so there aren't many "spare" super computers laying around.
It's a program that runs calculations on your computer... nothing more nothing less. So... Yes, it is kinda like Super Pi, solving a really hard math problem.
It's a program that runs calculations on your computer... nothing more nothing less. So... Yes, it is kinda like Super Pi, solving a really hard math problem.
- Apoptosis
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it sends you the work unit... you solve the work unit... send the whole unit back to them... I've had some take 1 hour to finish and others 2 full days.
Because this is cheaper and produces more results. Thats why they opened it up to the public. Right now they have over 33,000 teams donating working on work units... some teams have thousands of users!
You get the picture... Stop asking questions and start folding!
Because this is cheaper and produces more results. Thats why they opened it up to the public. Right now they have over 33,000 teams donating working on work units... some teams have thousands of users!
You get the picture... Stop asking questions and start folding!
- Amy
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Since Stanford is a college, I am sure that having a budget to buy a super computer is quite a problem. I mean, think about it! My school has trouble getting 6 new computers for the library's study lounges! Instead of spending a butload of money on a "supercomputer," Stanford has devised a method to get the calculations done by getting people to donate CPU cycles, which is easy to spare, instead of donating money. I think it's brilliant! I don't see how anyone loses in this situation!
- Illuminati
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CPU cycles are just how CPU's work... a cycle is when a processor loads one piece of information from the L1 Cache, processes it, writes that back to memory, and then starts this cycle again.A10Pilot3 wrote:Hmm ok, I kinda see how it works, it's still way over my head but whatever.
Two more questions....
What in the heck is a cpu cycle?
and when I download and run this program, will it keep auto downloading new packets or whatever and uploading the finished ones?
to answer your second question... yes.
would that be equal to 3.6 billion times per second on my cpu or not?Illuminati wrote:CPU cycles are just how CPU's work... a cycle is when a processor loads one piece of information from the L1 Cache, processes it, writes that back to memory, and then starts this cycle again.A10Pilot3 wrote:Hmm ok, I kinda see how it works, it's still way over my head but whatever.
Two more questions....
What in the heck is a cpu cycle?
and when I download and run this program, will it keep auto downloading new packets or whatever and uploading the finished ones?
to answer your second question... yes.
and what do the numbers mean, like Apop has 3800 or something on our team... how long has Legit Reviews been doing this folding @ home thing?
- Illuminati
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- Amy
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The numbers are just a score. It's something like the bigger the protein you fold, the higher your score or something. It's pretty random, as far as I can tell, when it comes to what proteins you get to fold. All I know is that the longer they take, the better the score. I can't say how long Apoptosis and Illuminati have been doing this, but it's been at least a month. I just joined I think yesterday or the day before, so I'm low gal on the totem pole (Pretty_Lady). If you go to the site and sniff around a bit, I'm sure you will get the answer to a lot of your questionsA10Pilot3 wrote: and what do the numbers mean, like Apop has 3800 or something on our team... how long has Legit Reviews been doing this folding @ home thing?
- infinitevalence
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A10, this is a simmilar problem that one of my proffesors works on. The idea is to break down genetic code into simple opperations and mathmaticly build (fold) protiens. Protines are cool little things that are used to build stuff in your body and come in lots of diffrent shapes and have lots of differnt functions. The goal is to decode and learn how to replicate protiens for medical use. I think its cool that computer dorks around the world donate power and cpu time to this sort of thing, like Amy said it costs her nothing (minus the power but thats not much) and it can give back so much.
"Don't open that! It's an alien planet! Is there air? You don't know!"
- Amy
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Here's another link that you all might find very helpful and informational (for those of you who aren't science nerds)
http://folding.stanford.edu/education/
http://folding.stanford.edu/education/