When will FAH be done? [When all diseases are cured]

[super6]

I assume that there is a finite number of proteins and folds that these proteins can make. Is there any sort of meter that shows us how close to complete the project is? Will we ever have mapped every possible fold of every protein?

[Ivoshiee]

There is no end. You can freely fold as long as science can be done with FAH.

[super6]

There is no end. You can freely fold as long as science can be done with FAH.

So there are an infinite number of folds? Surely at some point you've exhausted all combinations, it's just a really big number.

[Ivoshiee]

There is no end. You can freely fold as long as science can be done with FAH.

So there are an infinite number of folds? Surely at some point you've exhausted all combinations, it's just a really big number.

The number of possible folds is astronomical. Do not worry all combinations are not interesting to study, but still the FAH conducted study is in its infancy and much more is ahead than behind:
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?p=58410#p58410

[sdack]

Imagine a protein the size of a car.

[Ivoshiee]

Imagine a protein the size of a car.

It is not possible.

[smASHer88]

I know a lot of people constantly feel like they just wanna not bother with Folding@Home, but i can tell ya, now that your actually running it, and you know how useful the idea of Distributed Computing is, can you imagine running your computer without a DC project using your idle CPU cycles?

I can honestly say that if ever a time comes where i'm just sick to death of Folding@Home, i won't quite Distributed Computing altogether, i'll just simply contributed to another DC project. But I chose F@H because i believe it will be most useful to us out of all the current DC projects.

Ideally i'd like to see Distributed Computing as something people just do, rather than worry that its somehow a virus etc. We currently have ~350,000 'active' donators to the project.. its a pittance compared to the amount of potential computers there is out there on the internet. But i guess its all gotta start somewhere, and i just hope we can continue to accumulate more contributors.

[Ivoshiee]

Currently the TFLOPS number is going up more sharply than number of FAH DC participants. A trend to go green will eventually start cutting the TFLOPS number per system and at some point the FAH may hit a wall when interesting problems are too complex and large that FAH DC is incapable of handling those. Then we have reached the end of FAH and that is much sooner than all possible combinations of fold.

[sdack]

Imagine a protein the size of a car.

It is not possible.

What is not possible? Creating a protein the size of a car or you imagining it?

I was only making a joke but the deeper sense of my comment is that it is often our imagination that sets us limits. The project Genom@Home found an end only to live on in Folding@Home. In the future it will be possible to simulate proteins on a sub-atomic level and I think there will also be a need to do so. The focus of the research will shift and perhaps grow. Research will likely not try to simulate the entire human body with one large super-computer at first but instead branch of into other areas which need to be understood before anything like this could take place. In a global picture there is much more going on and there will always be a need for this computing grid.

[codysluder]

Currently the TFLOPS number is going up more sharply than number of FAH DC participants. A trend to go green will eventually start cutting the TFLOPS number per system and at some point the FAH may hit a wall when interesting problems are too complex and large that FAH DC is incapable of handling those. Then we have reached the end of FAH and that is much sooner than all possible combinations of fold.

I think you're forgetting about Moore's Law. The complexity of the proteins being studied will continue to increase, but the computational power per system will continue to increase, too. It's not clear to me which trend will surpass the other.

As far as "green" is concerned, I share your concern about the total power draw, but that's just because we cannot see the future well enough. In the early days of computing, IBM expected that the eventual total world-wide market for computers would be no more than a few dozens, partly because of their size, but also because of how much power they needed. Clearly they were wrong.

The trend toward higher and higher power (and more and more heat) seems insurmountable from the limited perspective we have of what the future holds, but soon some sort of breakthrough will "solve" this problem in some way we cannot yet forsee.