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Team 10 Folding@home Guide - last updated September 2015
- Want to help find cures for diseases?
- Do you have a high spec rig that you want to make the most of?
- Need an excuse to buy more hardware?!
Be part of a competitive and friendly distributed computing community - help OcUks folding@home team:
Team 10 – the greatest team in the world!!
Introduction to Folding@home
Folding@home is a distributed computing project run by Stanford University - people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. This is then used to simulate the folding of proteins.
When proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
What is protein folding?
Proteins are biology's workhorses - its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
How does folding@home work?
1. Download and set up the folding@home with a username and team number (10).
2. The client downloads a section of work to complete called a “work unit”.
3. The work unit is then completed using spare CPU / GPU processing power.
4. The work unit is uploaded to the project servers and points are credited to your username and team.
Points and scoring
Each work unit you complete has a value of a certain number of points. The more work units you complete the more points you get. This is where the competitive aspect of folding comes in. The points you collect are all recorded under your username and your team.
There are leader boards for both teams and users, all striving to move higher up the leader board and “stomp” the opposition.
When moving up the ranks within the team it is polite to “parp” a fellow team member a week or so before you stomp them, this gives them chance to up their game and try to defend their position.
You will hear “PPD” a lot, this is “points per day” and is a standard way of measuring the performance of folder, team, CPU or GPU.
Folding@home client download
The Folding@home client can be downloaded from here:
Download
There are clients for all the major operating systems. The set up is easy and self explanatory but if you need more info installation guides and FAQs can be found here:
Software Guide
Passkey
A passkey uniquely identifies you and enables you to get bonus points.
To get a passkey (which you then enter into the client) from here
Passkey FAQ
Are there any risks to my hardware?
Folding uses as much as your computers resource as you want it to. The main problem with running components at 100% load is the heat which is created. This heat is what will cause any problems, this is why I would not recommend folding on laptops or PS3s 24/7, as it is difficult to disperse this heat.
Desktop users should not have any problems so long as their components are properly cooled, but it is something to be aware of.
Constantly running components on full load may reduce their lifespan, but it might fail after, say, 10 years, instead of 15, in other words the technology will be surpassed anyway, so don't worry about it.
Help
If you need any help with setting up folding and the guides don’t have the answer just start a thread and someone will get back to you. It always helps to see any error messages you are getting along with the start of the log file which can be found in the client directory.
Monitoring your Stats
There are a few different stats websites that provide information such as the number of points you have and your current PPD. For everyday use most of us tend to use EOC.
EOC Folding Stats
Stanford Stats
Monitoring your Clients
The 3 main programs to use to monitor your client(s) are HFM.NET, FahMon and FahSpy. HFM.NET has the most features, including the ability to publish a website to check your clients remotely and an email notification system to notify you of EUEs (early unit end - unstable machine).
All are available for Windows but only FahMon has Linux and OS X versions. You can also use windows remote desktop and programs like Teamviewer to remote in and monitor the client.
HFM.NET
FahMon
FahSpy
Stats signatures
If you would like to show off your PPD or team rank you can do so in your signature.
EOC Stats sigs
Other links
Folding@home server status
List of folding tools
Updates - new work units / server work
Folding RSS feed: http://folding.typepad.com/news/atom.xml
(Very) old guide archive
and last but not least, remember to put your team number as team 10
Welcome to the fold
- Want to help find cures for diseases?
- Do you have a high spec rig that you want to make the most of?
- Need an excuse to buy more hardware?!
Be part of a competitive and friendly distributed computing community - help OcUks folding@home team:
Team 10 – the greatest team in the world!!
Introduction to Folding@home
Folding@home is a distributed computing project run by Stanford University - people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. This is then used to simulate the folding of proteins.
When proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
What is protein folding?
Proteins are biology's workhorses - its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
How does folding@home work?
1. Download and set up the folding@home with a username and team number (10).
2. The client downloads a section of work to complete called a “work unit”.
3. The work unit is then completed using spare CPU / GPU processing power.
4. The work unit is uploaded to the project servers and points are credited to your username and team.
Points and scoring
Each work unit you complete has a value of a certain number of points. The more work units you complete the more points you get. This is where the competitive aspect of folding comes in. The points you collect are all recorded under your username and your team.
There are leader boards for both teams and users, all striving to move higher up the leader board and “stomp” the opposition.
When moving up the ranks within the team it is polite to “parp” a fellow team member a week or so before you stomp them, this gives them chance to up their game and try to defend their position.
You will hear “PPD” a lot, this is “points per day” and is a standard way of measuring the performance of folder, team, CPU or GPU.
Folding@home client download
The Folding@home client can be downloaded from here:
Download
There are clients for all the major operating systems. The set up is easy and self explanatory but if you need more info installation guides and FAQs can be found here:
Software Guide
Passkey
A passkey uniquely identifies you and enables you to get bonus points.
To get a passkey (which you then enter into the client) from here
Passkey FAQ
Are there any risks to my hardware?
Folding uses as much as your computers resource as you want it to. The main problem with running components at 100% load is the heat which is created. This heat is what will cause any problems, this is why I would not recommend folding on laptops or PS3s 24/7, as it is difficult to disperse this heat.
Desktop users should not have any problems so long as their components are properly cooled, but it is something to be aware of.
Constantly running components on full load may reduce their lifespan, but it might fail after, say, 10 years, instead of 15, in other words the technology will be surpassed anyway, so don't worry about it.
Help
If you need any help with setting up folding and the guides don’t have the answer just start a thread and someone will get back to you. It always helps to see any error messages you are getting along with the start of the log file which can be found in the client directory.
Monitoring your Stats
There are a few different stats websites that provide information such as the number of points you have and your current PPD. For everyday use most of us tend to use EOC.
EOC Folding Stats
Stanford Stats
Monitoring your Clients
The 3 main programs to use to monitor your client(s) are HFM.NET, FahMon and FahSpy. HFM.NET has the most features, including the ability to publish a website to check your clients remotely and an email notification system to notify you of EUEs (early unit end - unstable machine).
All are available for Windows but only FahMon has Linux and OS X versions. You can also use windows remote desktop and programs like Teamviewer to remote in and monitor the client.
HFM.NET
FahMon
FahSpy
Stats signatures
If you would like to show off your PPD or team rank you can do so in your signature.
EOC Stats sigs
Other links
Folding@home server status
List of folding tools
Updates - new work units / server work
Folding RSS feed: http://folding.typepad.com/news/atom.xml
(Very) old guide archive
and last but not least, remember to put your team number as team 10
Welcome to the fold
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