Folding Forum

Hi,

I'm concerned about COVID-19. For years I have been using BOINC, crunching Rosetta and World Community Grid WUs and today discovered Folding@home is dedicating work to this pandemic. I suspended crunching all projects in BOINC so as to devote my computer to dealing solely with COVID-19. In the F@H setup info it says to work with this, to allow it to work with "Any Disease". I did so but see my assigned WU regards to cancer research.

The sole reason I installed F@H was to help with COVID-19. Is there any way I can direct the project to this agenda? If not, then I'll go back to using BOINC where it was already working on protein folding and cancer research.

Thanks for any info.

To run COVID-19's adversarial program, you must first have a powerful GPU. At present, the CPU cannot run the corresponding computing package.
Install FAH program first, then enter configure → Slot → remove CPU → choose GPU → Extra slot options → Add → Name: client-type ; Value: beta → ok → ok.
Then go to Expert → Add → Name: client-type ; Value: beta → ok → save.
Choose "Folding Power", drag it to "Full".
At this point, you have completed most of the settings, and your FAH program will automatically execute the calculation package to against COVID-19.
Unfortunately, FAH does not currently have an option that allows you to specify the implementation of the COVID-19 project.
Fortunately, since COVID-19 has just joined the BETA test plan, when you set the client-type to beta and only use the GPU, your FAH program will basically only run the COVID-19 project.
I am from China. My country was first attacked by COVID-19. More than 3,000 of my compatriots died unfortunately because of COVID-19.
I also just joined the FAH project shortly after I saw the news a few days ago. This is also the first time I have posted on this forum.
Thank you for joining. Let us defeat this common enemy of humanity together.

From a bunch of other threads on this topic, basically the answer to your question is no, YOU can't. But, the scientists can. If you set the client to fold "Any Disease", it will take whatever WUs are the highest priority from the servers first, followed by the lower priority projects. COVID-19, given its level of importance, will likely have a high priority from the servers, thus, you should be getting COVID-19 projects once they are released to the full FAH; they are in beta right now to work out any bugs. You will still get some other WUs mixed in as well I believe.

Welcome to Folding@Home!

In addition to the excellent post by X-Wing, at this point all COVID-19 WUs will be Core_22 for graphics cards, not CPUs.

After some time, they may find use for CPUs, but for now, no Core_a7 CPU WUs will be for COVID-19. You may prefer to continue to use BOINC projects on your CPU and just devote your GPU to F@H.

(Also, at this time the COVID-19 WUs are in a public beta, they are hoped to be in production by the end of the week, if all goes well)

Bear in mind that all the COVID-19 units are for GPU only. You will need to have a recent GPU configured to fold.

Thanks for the info. I had filled out the equipment here but apparently it only shows in the signature, so I just now moved it there.

I have had my GPU running SETI solely but now that seti is at a close, I wanted both my CPU and GPU to work on the COBID-19 issue. My being new here and coming from the myriad web notices saying F@H working on this blight & to join in, I expected to find it up and running for COBID-19. I have read Rosetta@home is now working on it, but I have no idea if they are focusing on COBID. Rosetta does not use the GPU.

I'll have to wait & see what comes of this Beta test in F@H, I don't care which distributed computing allows me to help with it, I just want that ASAP. If F@H only uses the GPU but will allow me to use my GPU with it, I'm good. In my almost 70 years of life, no virus has concerned me more and if not stopped early, this could be our equivalent of the Great Plague.

I'll see what comes of the Beta & the ability to focus on this Coronavirus.

Thank you for the replies.

ROG Strix Z390-E Motherboard
i7-8700K @ 5100 MHz
32 Gig GSkill RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

Hi! Thanks so much for helping us out, I'm just leaving for work now, when I get there I'm moving the 6 coronavirus projects from beta to full F@h, we didn't see any problems with overnight testing.

As has already been stated, supported GPUs are much more powerful than the CPUs on your computer. The development of projects for GPUs are currently being beta tested is consistent with a prompt public roll-out. At some time in the future, FAH may decide to develop additional projects for CPUs, but FAH's scientific resources are somewhat limited and I think they've made a wise decision about how to start. I can't promise what might be developed once the initial stages of this research is in full production.

rafwiewiora, thanks! I look forward to helping out.

Bruce, I'm not sure what you mean, my GPU is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and offers a 6.1 on the Cuda compute capability.

I looked at this link and it seems to include mine https://foldingathome.org/faqs/gpu3-com ... or-nvidia/

From that page I found this link https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus

What is the list for compatible GPUs for F@H? If mine is not good enough to work with this, I'll get one.

Thanks for the replies, I look forward F@H & helping out on this.

Yes, you're perfectly fine to run, thanks!

KA1J wrote:What is the list for compatible GPUs for F@H? If mine is not good enough to work with this, I'll get one.

For Nvidia, Everything before Kepler is too old: (Tesla and most of Fermi) Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, and Turing are fine.

AMD is a little trickier as some mobile GPUs lack double precision, which is required. In general, GCN and Navi are supported, and TeraScale 2 and 3 MAY be supported.

In these Wikipedia tables, look for double precision. (very little Double Precision is done, so it is not slowing work down, but it is required)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N ... 400_series

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... 000_series

Single Precision speed will be important, if the deadline is short enough. We won't know that until they hit production, but a GTX 1080 will most likely be fine.

The following may not be current but it might answer some of your questions:

https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/i ... uirements/

Folks, thank you for the efforts and assistance. The WUs related to Covid-19 are running nicely on my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. As the CPU workloads are working on other data and I wish to dedicate work to this pandemic only until it is resolved, I have removed the CPU slot, leaving the GPU working in folding, and have restarted downloading WUs on Rosetta which is now working on COVID-19, Rosetta only uses the CPU.

I will check back periodically to see if modifications to the engine to allow the CPU to be dedicated to COVID-19 have been accomplished. If that is the eventuality, I will be happy to re-engage the CPU in F@H to do this, I'd rather be running just one distributed computing software at a time.

Thanks, and good luck to us all.

FAH will most likely develop CPU projects "soon" for COVAID but GPUs came first.

Rosetta is also a reasonable option as long as you leave at least one CPU thread to support data transfers to/from the GPU.

thanks for the information. Covid 19 on the GPU Runs