Do you already know Folding@home? It is a distributed computing project for simulating protein folding and misfolding. Through it, the scientific community can better understand the development of various diseases, such as Alzheimer's, BSE (mad cow disease), and cystic fibrosis.
The project was launched on October 1, 2000, and is managed by the Pande Lab, a group within the Chemistry department at Stanford University, and supervised by Professor Vijay S. Pande. On March 8, 2004, Genome@Home merged with Folding@home. It is currently the largest project of its kind using the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) platform.
How does distributed computing work?
Folding@home does not rely on powerful supercomputers for data processing. Instead, the project's primary contributors are thousands of personal computers that have a small program (client) installed. The client runs in the background and utilizes the computer's processor when it is idle. It then periodically connects to the server to download a Work Unit, data packets on which it performs calculations. Once the Work Unit is completed, it is sent back to the server.
Users can also control their contributions. Until 2014, the project maintained a ranking of top contributors (by user and by team) based on the quantity and difficulty of the completed Work Units.
The project has had more than 180,000 processors actively participating in Folding@home and has over 1,300,000 registered processors. Today, Google Labs, through Google Compute Engine, is a partner in the project. With this level of participation, Folding@home has one of the most powerful computers in the world, capable of producing around 175 teraflops!
And what does all of this have to do with e-Setorial?
In our article Big Data for beginners, we shared the following definition of Big Data:
“Big Data is a broad term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. Challenges include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and information privacy.”
Therefore, all the data processing work we do for large datasets is related to the Folding@home project. In our Decision Support Solutions, in our Data Administration services, and through SetorialMetrics, we use Big Data to manage complex data and perform customized processing according to each need. Contact us and see how we can help your company.
So, shall we change the world?