Fezmid Posted February 13, 2005 Posted February 13, 2005 Leave your computer on overnight? Don't do much other than surf the web? Well, put your spare CPU cycles to good use and help find a cure for Alzheimer's by joining the Folding@Home project. I don't know the science behind what they're researching (something about folding protein molecules...), but the tech behind distributed computing has been around for awhile. Basically you install a program on your computer and then when you're not using the CPU (ie: writing email, surfing the web, etc), it's doing mathematical computations in the background. When it finishes a unit, it uploads the results and then downloads a new unit to work on. It'd be cool if people could join the 2CPU team -- they're currently ranked 4th overall, but are starting to lose some ground to some other people behind them. Here's a link to the site: http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ Here's a link to a forum that can answer questions for you: http://forums.2cpu.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=37 Join Team 3074 (2CPU.com): http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py...ge&teamnum=3074 I'm ranked 474th (out of 847) on the team. Even if you don't want to join the 2CPU team (maybe make a TBD/TSW team?), it's for a good cause. CW
Rubes Posted February 14, 2005 Posted February 14, 2005 Leave your computer on overnight? Don't do much other than surf the web? Well, put your spare CPU cycles to good use and help find a cure for Alzheimer's by joining the Folding@Home project. I don't know the science behind what they're researching (something about folding protein molecules...), but the tech behind distributed computing has been around for awhile. Basically you install a program on your computer and then when you're not using the CPU (ie: writing email, surfing the web, etc), it's doing mathematical computations in the background. When it finishes a unit, it uploads the results and then downloads a new unit to work on. It'd be cool if people could join the 2CPU team -- they're currently ranked 4th overall, but are starting to lose some ground to some other people behind them. Here's a link to the site: http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/ Here's a link to a forum that can answer questions for you: http://forums.2cpu.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=37 Join Team 3074 (2CPU.com): http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py...ge&teamnum=3074 I'm ranked 474th (out of 847) on the team. Even if you don't want to join the 2CPU team (maybe make a TBD/TSW team?), it's for a good cause. CW 237823[/snapback] It's an interesting cause. I remember a while back, though, when SETI@Home was the big thing in idle CPU use, there was some backlash because more and more people began leaving their computers on when not in use, just so it could do this. Something about a waste of electricity...
Fezmid Posted February 14, 2005 Author Posted February 14, 2005 It's an interesting cause. I remember a while back, though, when SETI@Home was the big thing in idle CPU use, there was some backlash because more and more people began leaving their computers on when not in use, just so it could do this. Something about a waste of electricity... 237849[/snapback] Seti@Home is still big. I run that on the second processor in my computer Computers don't use very much electricity as long as you set it up to powerdown the harddrive and put the monitor in sleep mode. Those are the two power eaters. I leave my PC on 24/7, as well as run a server 24/7 and my electric bill isn't much higher than before I did it (about $4/month higher - worth it for me so I don't have to wait for it to boot, combined with the fact that I can run automated backups to my server, etc) The gas bill, on the other hand.... CW
Fezmid Posted February 14, 2005 Author Posted February 14, 2005 I'm going to bump this for the Monday morning crowd - it's for a good cause and is free. CW
Recommended Posts