
Folding@home now has 400k users fighting coronavirus - sanefive
https://decrypt.co/23064/folding-at-home-now-has-400000-users-fighting-coronavirus?&
======
joncrane
Viral Research Firm? I thought F@H was run out of Stanford University.

Edit: it's run out of Washington University (St. Louis School of Medicine) so
it's definitely neither a firm nor viral. Mods should change the title.

~~~
dang
Fixed now. Submitted title was "Viral research firm 'Folding at Home' has 400K
users fighting C19 with CPU power".

" _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't
editorialize._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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MaxBarraclough
There was a recent HN discussion on whether this kind of approach has ever
produced an effective treatment for anything. I believe the answer was _Never,
but lots of papers have been published_.

Assuming that's the case, I don't put much stock in this giving us a means of
fighting the pandemic.

~~~
plopilop
Well science goes frutstratingly slowly, especially in these fields. According
to wikipedia the project has helped in 118 papers.

The idea of the single scientist singlehandedly solving everything is mostly a
myth. Most of the time, people rely on hundreds of previous papers before
making their own contribution. Taken together, all the minimal steps make a
significant leap.

Folding@home can very well be part of this effort.

------
natch
I wish they would spend five minutes documenting how to use the GPU on Ubuntu.
My 1080ti is just sitting idle while my CPU is busy folding. Any instructions
I came across said something like “make sure you have the libraries” but then
failed to describe even at a high level how to locate and install those
libraries. Last time I installed any CUDA libraries it involved adding an
Nvidia repo or something.

Edit: I’d be glad to be proven wrong with a link to an FAQ or some part of the
docs.

~~~
tomchuk
As mentioned, you'll need to ensure your /etc/fahclient/client.xml includes:

    
    
      <config>
        <!-- Folding Slots -->
        <slot id='0' type='CPU'/>
        <slot id='1' type='GPU'/>
      </config>
    

If you check your logs in /var/lib/fahclient/logs, you'll probably see
something like:

    
    
      CUDA Device 0: Platform:0 Device:0 Bus:51 Slot:0 Compute:7.5 Driver:10.2
             OpenCL: Not detected: Failed to open dynamic library 'libOpenCL.so':
                     libOpenCL.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or
                     directory
    

Take that missing library over to the Ubuntu Package Search[0] and it will
lead you to ocl-icd-opencl-dev

    
    
      apt install ocl-icd-opencl-dev
    

Restart fahclient and you should see something like:

    
    
       CUDA Device 0: Platform:0 Device:0 Bus:51 Slot:0 Compute:7.5 Driver:10.2
      OpenCL Device 0: Platform:0 Device:0 Bus:51 Slot:0 Compute:1.2 Driver:440.64
    

[0]
[https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=bionic&arch=amd64&m...](https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=bionic&arch=amd64&mode=exactfilename&searchon=contents&keywords=libOpenCL.so)

~~~
inamberclad
This doesn't fix the problem, since ocl-icd* and nvidia-libopencl* provide
libOpenCL.so.1 and FAHClient looks for libOpenCL.so, so you need to add a
symlink, in the same directory.

------
ISL
Title nit-pick -- It isn't a "firm", but a project:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home)

------
zimbatm
Make sure to contribute GPU resources as the CPU ones aren't being used for
C19 research.

EDIT: I have heard that CPU is also getting C19 research but not exclusively.

Here is a better link with more details:
[https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/coronavirus/blob/master/REA...](https://github.com/FoldingAtHome/coronavirus/blob/master/README.md)

FreeBSD port: [https://www.leidinger.net/blog/2020/03/19/fighting-the-
coron...](https://www.leidinger.net/blog/2020/03/19/fighting-the-coronavirus-
with-freebsd-foldinghome/)

NixOS port: [https://discourse.nixos.org/t/fight-covid-19-with-folding-
ho...](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/fight-covid-19-with-folding-home-and-
nixos/6202)

~~~
pandaman
I wish I could. It only uses CPU on my machine, saying there are no work items
for the GPU slot.

~~~
allannienhuis
That happened to me initially too, but I left it running (on idle config) and
it had obtained work by the next day when I looked.

~~~
pandaman
Thanks, I've tried again after reading your reply and, indeed, it managed to
pick up a GPU job rather quickly. I did disable the CPU slot, don't know if
it's a coincidence but a couple days ago when I tried this first it spent
several hours only running CPU work w/o any GPU.

~~~
allannienhuis
yes, that might be the trick. I also disabled the cpu slot.

------
tengbretson
So is someone sitting there, monitoring the results of this C19 folding
operation as they come in and then when they see exactly the right result they
shout eureka! and dance around the room? Then they shout "Get this to the lab,
stat!" After which the lab starts churning out thousands of vials of antidote
and everyone gets cured?

------
ipspam
My gas furnace supplies a baseline of heat, and my basement gets topped up
with electric heat. What are the mechanics of energy usage for me?

I feel like all energy is converted to heat in my laptop. That would mean free
computing power?

Am I missing something? Can energy be converted to a form I am overlooking
with computational work?

~~~
sn7408
All heat from your electronics (CPUs&GPUs) are waste heat, you could replace
your electric heater with a computer to get "free computing power".

------
sixstringtheory
Responded cheekily with this link in a reply chain but wanted to bubble it
up... you can earn a form of cryptocurrency from folding work units:
[https://curecoin.net/](https://curecoin.net/)

------
ksk
I don't mind donating to them, but what are the kinds of problems has folding
at home has solved in recent times (~5 years)?

------
DavideNL
Would be cool if i could join on my PS4... guess I'd need to jailbreak it and
run Linux.

------
mugivarra69
its really compute power lol. i am folding with my V100 gpus.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
Does this project have enough promise compared to its external cost? I imagine
that’s _a lot_ of energy usage.

~~~
klipt
Better than bitcoin!

~~~
sixstringtheory
and you can still earn crypto from folding:
[https://curecoin.net/](https://curecoin.net/)

