Folding Forum

Hey everyone, I'm studying F@H and protein folding for my research project at school.
My question (I aimed for it to be appealing) is "How can a single computer help find a cure for cancer".
I worded my question like this to make it sound appealing to others, I explain in my research that F@H takes advantage of distributed computing, and I'm focusing on cancer (the p53 protein basically) for my project.
Before I started this research project, I only had a basic idea of biology and I didn't understand anything about proteins at all, Everything I've learnt about it has been from the internet so feel free to correct me on anything.

As part of my research I need some qualitative information from a primary source, so it would be awesome if I can get some answers and incorporate them into my research.

I intend on increasing awareness of F@H in my school (1000+ students, basically all of them have no idea what F@H is) and the answers to these questions will help me in that goal.

How far ahead are GPUs compared to CPUs when it comes to F@H at this point?
I understand that F@H utilises a GPU far more than a CPU. How much of an impact do CPUs make in F@H now? I ask this since the PC I built for this project was built around the CPU (an i7-6700) and not a GPU.

Can someone summarise how much of an impact F@H has had in medicine? I’ve read up on most of the diseases that F@H works with, especially cancer (the disease I’m focusing on for this project), and I understand what F@H does to help get closer to a cure or drug for most of the diseases, but how much of a real world impact has F@H had?

I understand that drugs can take around 20 years to go from creation to the consumer market, and F@H has only been out for 17, and I saw a person in Alzheimer's drug discovery say that they were actively working on drugs based on the solutions of F@H (4 years ago). My question in relation to this, is what do you guys see in the future of F@H? Considering it’s been out for 17 years, I imagine some drugs created partly based off the results of F@H would be in the market, or are soon to be anyway.

I intend on putting out a survey to get data from students from the school I go to (1000+, yrs 10-12). Part of my goal with this survey is to increase awareness of F@H, I find it genuinely awesome that we’re able to contribute to something this big with just our computers and a program. My question to you guys is how would you convince the majority of these 1000+ students to use their computers downtime for good?

Thanks

Hi
I am not an expert in how much impact F@H have but you could look into the papers:
https://foldingathome.stanford.edu/papers-results/
and where they are public (how well known the journals are. I think you should look into the impact factor of each of those journals and compare them to Nature)

If you are into the science part then you could also read those articles but some of theme are are bid heavy for a normal person to read.

Welcome to foldingforum.org, lachlanf.
... and thank you in advance for your efforts to spread the awareness of FAH to your fellow students.

Regarding the differences between folding on a GPU and folding on a CPU, both can process the same type of information (though the analysis code ("FAHCore") is necessarily different. The main reason is that a CPU like your i7 is designed to process 4 to 32 mathematical operations concurrently (using SSE and/or AVX). GPUs are designed to process hundreds to a few thousand operations concurrently. Both contribute to FAH's research athough GPUs are performing an increasing percentage of the work.

FAH is dedicated to Basic Scientific Research. FAH's results are not patented. That means that the results they obtain are published in scientific papers like those linked above and are available to other research organizations, including various drug companies. Drug companies take that information together with their own research and develop potential drugs. Drug companies are in the business of making money from the sale of their products, but before that can happen, a potential drug must undergo rigorous testing to assure that it meets the intended purpose and that there are no serious side-effects. Once a drug passes those tests and is patented it is ready to be marketed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trial and related information.

I would really enjoy reading the results of your project. When you're finished, please let us know. Also let us know what grade you got! Thanks for your support, and good luck lachlanf!

Really nice idea of you with that project and the intention to raise awareness.

I personally would not have started folding if I were in school, as I think its not that easy to pay electricity when you're in school or you're not in charge of the bill (as you would most likely still live with your parents...).
I started folding at home when I moved out to go to university, where I lived in a students home and where I don't have to pay for power...

However I tried something similar to you, and tried to convince all my colleagues to do folding at home as well, but it was until then I realized how hard is is to get someone to do something good. (even if most of them have it like me with the power bills...)
At one time I even hung up a variety of papers, that our folding group was looking for more people to contribute, but noone joined our small group...

I hope you do better with your motivating-job

Hello lachlanf,

Thank you for taking the time and effort to research this project an to increase awareness at your school.

I've been folding for a long time. My experience is similar to J.P.R. Years ago I formed a team and tried to get my closest friends to participate. I wasn't able to get anyone else to participate. It's hard to get casual computer users to participate. Motivating computer hobbyists is probably easier. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot of people who are hobbyists like me.

The good news, I think, is that the project has evolved since its beginning. In the beginning it relied on a large number of participants who each donated a relatively small amount of compute power. Now it relies on a relatively small number of contributors who each contribute a large amount of computing power. This change resulted from the massive amount of compute power available with a single high-end graphics cards. The result is that you don't have to convince as many people to participate to have a big impact.

I believe that this evolution is beneficial for the project because the number of FLOPS has continued to increase even though the number of participants has fallen. A graph showing FLOPS versus number of participants over time might be interesting for your project. You also asked about relative performance of an i7 compared to a high end graphic card. Points per day provides a metric that would help you answer that question. There are several threads in other parts of this forum that describe PPD for various types of hardware that you could use to answer that question.

I'm not sure what all of this means for your goal of increasing participation at your school. Identifying students who have the requisite hardware is part of that. Gamers might be one group that have the right hardware. Motivating them to participate is another. How to motivate people to participate is one of the key issues that FAH in general faces.