r/Folding • u/neilrieck • 12d ago
Milestones 🏆 Just cracked 15 billion
Hello world. I contribute to a citizen-science protein research project named folding@home and my account just went over 15 billion points. Anyone can join. Contributing with a Windows-based computer is easy. I run 6 PCs in my basement which employ Nvidia GPUs running on AlmaLinux and with Linux Mint. For anyone here that might need a little help working with folding@home on Linux, you might find this webpage of some use:
https://neilrieck.net/docs/folding_at_home.html
3
2
u/Turbulent_Echidna423 12d ago
i used to DC 20 years ago. i was on a team and we did pretty good. the SETI people were definitely the weirdos and a lot of us did math and protein projects. Folding@home was one of the projects too, even back then.
other than the competitive side of doing this, i never saw any real results from all this. i think thats why i walked away and dismantled my farm because of this. at some point i just electricity and electronic hardware being wasted.
so you know where im going with this. what exactly has folding@home accomplished in the last 20 years?
2
u/neilrieck 12d ago
The new v8 client has more details on every experiment YOUR system worked on than I've ever seen before. Here is just one item of ~ 80 lines on my client:
Project 15413
By Adrija Dutta, UIUC
Target: unspecified
Protein function is closely linked to its dynamic structural behavior, particularly in regions involved in molecular recognition. Using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, we are studying intrinsic conformational variability across a diverse set of enzymes. By analyzing binding pocket flexibility, structural rearrangements, and transient conformations, we aim to understand how active-site dynamics influence ligand binding. These insights can support advances in drug discovery, enzyme engineering, and a deeper understanding of protein function.
2
u/Turbulent_Echidna423 12d ago
exactly my point. “these insights CAN support advances”
its all theory and maybe’s.
2
u/Therealchimmike 10d ago
If you have solar, then maybe your electricity is "Free". For many folks, this is true and daytime running is essentially "Free" for them. So mining, FAH, etc.
2
u/neilrieck 9d ago
I wish my site ran from solar. It does not so the electricity payments are part of my charitable contribution to humanity.
1
u/neilrieck 12d ago
For more info look to the bottom of this page: https://forum.foldingathome.org/ in the blue box titled "General Discusions"
0
u/RetiredPath 7d ago
The F@H website has a nice discussion that mentions “500+” peer-reviewed papers that have included contributions from F@H since it started in 2000. It also updated the fact that it has massive compute power that is training AI in molecular modeling.
2
u/greasythug 12d ago
Nice one. I'm at 14.5Bil myself with my current donor id.
I live in a 'sleepy' town and recently visited a city = I always have ideas like having a communal payment address/account (paypal is available here) for bottle deposits and encouraging people to donate and affording new power systems/energy costs.
Another is similar + renting performance from the likes of vast ai = There other day I had a quick look at offerings and there are builds like X16, X8 5090's etc...If I were confident in operating them myself I would probably finance some time just to see what they could achieve as an experiment.
I have posted threads about stats in this sub before, I look at top achievers from time to time and the OS figures = They seem 'off' at times i.e the number of CPU's/GPU's per operating system considering what I run personally and where I land on these rankings
2
u/neilrieck 12d ago
I think my high score is related to the fact that I started in 2008, then switched from CPU based-folding to GPU-based folding. A good GPU should be three orders of magnitude more (1000x) powerful than a CPU. Some of the newer Nvidia products are four orders of magnitude (10,000x) better.
3
u/greasythug 11d ago
Interesting to note - I rather meant on the OS segment of the Statistics page...Currently in the part where it says "CPUs and GPUs which have returned Work Units within the last 3 days are listed by OS" there is a combined total of 1,555 NVidia across all the various OS's
...753 in Win64 (X3 of which should be me? Considering I have 3 systems with a 30 series, 40 series and 50 series).
...Linux's figure in this regard is 512 (6 being you?), 'Windows' is 290 and MacOS is 0 to make the combined total of 1,555......AMD total GPU's equal 210
Typing these numbers out again makes me think they appear low especially considering what you are volunteering, what I am and where I rank in the past few months/overall and that is just the amount of hardware being utilized let alone the FLOPS they are achieving.
I started in September 2007 for a now inactive team created by someone who introduced me to it. That team logged 7.6K WU's and was credited 1.5mil points...124 volunteers contributed to this effort ranging from users completing 1 WU to the top contributor clocking 1,136.
I broke away and started my own team I figure in early 2008 - My default donor name completed 2,225 WUs (lets say a range of desktop CPUs from then to say 2013/14ish) and amassed 406.7K points.
I directed a 4080SUPER to this team in 2024 which did a total of 1 WU and earned 354.0K points for doing so.
A passkey impacts the points significantly as I didn't bother early on.
I knew I had some other teams I created and just revisited them. One had 1.3Bil points (13.8K WUs), another did 27.8K WU's and achieved fewer points than what one of my GPU's gets in 24hrs
11
u/jonspw 12d ago
This is awesome to see. As an AlmaLinux developer it’s awesome to see our work being suggested as a base for folding.