CDC / NVIDIA

Want to help in the battle against the novel coronavirus? You can put your PCs graphics processor to work with Folding@home. Youll join an army of computers running calculations to help scientists understand the virus.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project thats been around since the year 2000. Its named after protein folding. If you install the software and join a project, it will run in the background and use spare graphics processing (GPU) power to run calculations. Your PC will be one of the hundreds of thousands of PCs running these calculations, all working together.

The software has previously been used to help find cures to cancer, Parkinsons, Huntingtons, influenza, and many other diseases. Now, Folding@home is helping scientists understand the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. As Folding@home director Greg Bowman explains, a better understanding of the virus could aid in the development of life-saving drugs.

In other words, you can put your PCs GPU to work crunching numbers that will help scientists better understand and fight the novel coronavirus.You can read specifics about how Folding@home is simulating the dynamics of COVID-19 proteins to hunt for new therapeutic opportunities on the projects website.

This work is GPU-dependent and requires NVIDIA or AMD graphics hardware. It will work best on computers with powerful graphics hardware.

To put your PC to work battling coronavirus, download the Folding@home installer and run it to install the software. Its available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Well show how it works on Windows here.

Once youve installed the Folding@home software, youll be taken to thehttps://client.foldingathome.org/ page, where you can control the software on your PC. You can choose to fold anonymously or set up an identity.

If you set up an identity, you can track your work and earn points. You can even join a team with other people and compete to see who can earn the most pointsjust a bit of friendly competition.

However, you dont need to set up an identityyou can just select Fold as Anonymous and click Start Folding to begin.

To ensure youre helping with COVID-19 research, ensure Any disease is selected under the I support research fighting box. This is the default option. With it enabled, Folding@home will prioritize work related to the novel coronavirus.

Work may not be available immediately, and your client may work on other diseases like Alzheimers, cancer, Huntingtons, or Parkinsons while waiting for COVID-19 jobs. Leave it running in the background, and it will automatically start any available work.

The Folding@home software will remain running in the backgroundeven when you have the web page closed. It will automatically use any spare resources and get out of the way when youre using your GPU for other purposes, like playing a PC game.

Look for the Folding@home icon in your computers notification area (system tray) to find options, pause it, or quit the software and prevent it from running.

If you decide you no longer want to participate, head to the Uninstall or change a program list in Windows and uninstall the FAHClient program.

Even NVIDIA has called for gamers to install Folding@home and donate any spare computing power they might have. Computers all over the world are joining the fight.

For more information, take a look at thisFAQ about the SARS-CoV-2 projects in Folding@home. Youll also find updates on Folding@homes news page.

Excerpt from:
How to Fight Coronavirus With Folding@home and a Gaming PC - How-To Geek