Folding@home during COVID19 Pandemic

A long time ago… I used to run Seti@Home on my computer, and this was more than 20 years ago. It was fun while it lasted, but computers were too slow, and frankly, I lost enthusiasm for finding aliens.

As time passed, I heard on the background of Folding proteins for medical research, never put too much attention. All of this changed with the COVID-19 pandemic. Here I was stuck at home with lots of computer and engineering expertise unable to do anything about it.

Then I read in the news Folding@Home was doing SARS-2 Research, and anyone with decent hardware could help.

I decided to dust off my computer carcasses and build something that could help against this invisible enemy that had us all trapped.

Quickly, I assembled an old virtualization server running Linux, an intel i7 with GTX 660 Video card and an i3 with AMD Radon HD7700,

All the hardware was fairly old, just to get I idea the i3 was released in Q3 or 2011, and the best video card was from the same vintage, an eternity in computer years, good enough I was doing “Something.”

After a few days of running, my virtualization server crashed, and I decided to let it die for good. I got some numbers and learned about some important terms. WU or Work Unit with is now projects are broken down to be…