Folding @ home project achieves 470 petaflops in computing power – IT Pro – News

The Folding @ home project has a total of 470 petaflops of computing power at its disposal by starting a distributed Coronavirus research project. This gives the project twice as much computing power as the Summit supercomputer.

Folding @ home allows users to use the computing power of their PCs to investigate complex diseases. Earlier this month the scientists behind Folding @ home reported that a special project has been set up to research coronavirus. Since then, the number of volunteers for the project has risen sharply, the director from Folding @ home, Dr. Greg Bowman, on Twitter.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, Greg Bowman reported that Folding @ home had 30,000 active volunteers, who together accounted for some 100 petaflops of computing power. In the meantime 400,000 volunteers participate to the project, bringing the total computing power to 470 petaflops. Most of the computing power is used for the coronavirus project.

To illustrate: the Summit supercomputer currently the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Oak Ridge National Laboritory achieves peak performance of 200 petaflops. With a Linpack benchmark, the computer achieves 148.6 petaflops, Techspot writes. Summit itself is now also deployed for research into the coronavirus.

The Dutch Power Cows also have a Folding @ home team. Users can participate by registering for Team 92. To participate in a vaccine for Covid-19, users should fold for “Any disease.” Users can now use their gpu and cpu for the coronavirus project. The client can here be downloaded.

–