Macaholic G5
Tech
Every second of the day, millions of computers around the world are sitting around doing nothing at all. In fact, its been estimated that roughly 99 percent of the average personal computers processing power is idled and hence wasted. Why let your Macs idle CPU cycles go to waste when they could be doing something really worthwhile? The next time you leave your keyboard and screen - or even pause to read a web page - your Mac could be working on a cure for AIDS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease or certain types of cancer.
How, you may ask? * By participating in a distributed computing project called Folding@home based at Stanford University. Since October 2000, the project has enlisted individual computer owners worldwide to donate their machines unused processing power to model the self-assembly or folding of protein molecules. Working together, the projects network of over 100,000 personal computers is 100x more powerful than any supercomputer. Is the science good? Absolutely! Results have already been published in several landmark scientific papers. Check out the published article in the October 2002 issue of the scientific journal Nature at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature01160 *
Join us and put your unused computer power to work! All you need are 1) a Mac with at least a 300 MHz processor, running OSX and 2) internet access. (Windows and Linux versions are also available) The folding program from Stanford installs effortlessly and runs at the lowest possible priority so that it immediately gets out of the way whenever your computer needs power for something else. You can play games, burn CDs, retouch photos, without the slightest change in the responsiveness of your system. The only difference you may notice is that the fans run more often. When you begin Folding, the program downloads a work unit (wu) and starts crunching through its computations. When it finishes, the program uploads the results and gets another unit. Depending on your setup, it can all be done automatically.
To keep things interesting for participants, the project uses a point system that helps people keep track of their project contributions. You can also create or join folding teams that offer technical support, camaraderie, and friendly competition for project ranking. There are thousands of teams in the project, including many Mac-centric ones. *
Why join Folding@home? Many of us have family or friends who have suffered or died from one of the diseases mentioned above. We want our children to enjoy a future free of those diseases. *Now, ordinary computer users with no specialized research training can help investigate, and someday cure, debilitating and/or fatal diseases - all at minimal cost in time, money or effort. Most of us folders have also made new friends and had fun along the way. IMHO youd be hard pressed to find a nicer bunch of people, overall, than the participants in this project. *Why hesitate?
If you would like to learn more, come visit the Team MacOS X Forums at http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.pl *Have a look around a little to get a feel for us. *Engage us in a discussion or two. Check out our links to learn more about the project or try these:
An article written by one of our team members for her Mac user group newsletter: http://www.ismug.com/atree/0402/atree3.html#foldingproteins
An Apple.com "Science Profiles" article from mid-2002 on Dr. Vijay Pande, the project director: *http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/stanford/
Another Apple.com article from March 2004 on Folding@home and our team captain Noah Johnson: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/proteinfolding/
If youve gotten this far, thanks for staying with me. *I hope to see you at our forums or read your comments below.
How, you may ask? * By participating in a distributed computing project called Folding@home based at Stanford University. Since October 2000, the project has enlisted individual computer owners worldwide to donate their machines unused processing power to model the self-assembly or folding of protein molecules. Working together, the projects network of over 100,000 personal computers is 100x more powerful than any supercomputer. Is the science good? Absolutely! Results have already been published in several landmark scientific papers. Check out the published article in the October 2002 issue of the scientific journal Nature at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature01160 *
Join us and put your unused computer power to work! All you need are 1) a Mac with at least a 300 MHz processor, running OSX and 2) internet access. (Windows and Linux versions are also available) The folding program from Stanford installs effortlessly and runs at the lowest possible priority so that it immediately gets out of the way whenever your computer needs power for something else. You can play games, burn CDs, retouch photos, without the slightest change in the responsiveness of your system. The only difference you may notice is that the fans run more often. When you begin Folding, the program downloads a work unit (wu) and starts crunching through its computations. When it finishes, the program uploads the results and gets another unit. Depending on your setup, it can all be done automatically.
To keep things interesting for participants, the project uses a point system that helps people keep track of their project contributions. You can also create or join folding teams that offer technical support, camaraderie, and friendly competition for project ranking. There are thousands of teams in the project, including many Mac-centric ones. *
Why join Folding@home? Many of us have family or friends who have suffered or died from one of the diseases mentioned above. We want our children to enjoy a future free of those diseases. *Now, ordinary computer users with no specialized research training can help investigate, and someday cure, debilitating and/or fatal diseases - all at minimal cost in time, money or effort. Most of us folders have also made new friends and had fun along the way. IMHO youd be hard pressed to find a nicer bunch of people, overall, than the participants in this project. *Why hesitate?
If you would like to learn more, come visit the Team MacOS X Forums at http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.pl *Have a look around a little to get a feel for us. *Engage us in a discussion or two. Check out our links to learn more about the project or try these:
An article written by one of our team members for her Mac user group newsletter: http://www.ismug.com/atree/0402/atree3.html#foldingproteins
An Apple.com "Science Profiles" article from mid-2002 on Dr. Vijay Pande, the project director: *http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/stanford/
Another Apple.com article from March 2004 on Folding@home and our team captain Noah Johnson: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/proteinfolding/
If youve gotten this far, thanks for staying with me. *I hope to see you at our forums or read your comments below.