Stanford's Folding@Home distributed computing operation has been in the news this week for hitting over 1 Petaflop and entering the record books. In the same week, the HEXUS.community's team of folders have breached the 500 mark in the F@H team rankings. Win win!
For those of you not savvy to Folding@Home, it's a project setup by Stanford University to compute protein folding modelling on the computers of anyone who fancies joining in. The more people chip in, processing work units, the more information can be collected that can be used to help find cures for diseases like cancers and Alzheimer's.
A few months ago Stanford released a PS3 version of their F@H client. Seeing as there aren't any games for the PS3 [you PC fanboy -Ed] and Linux is crap, people have made use of their mortgage-breaking games consoles by joining the world of Folding.
And while less than a fifth of machines running the client are PS3s, the powerful Cell chip has helped propell F@H past a Petaflop, and into the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most powerful distributed computing project.
The HEXUS.community is doing its bit too, and having a hoot in the process. The team has now made it into the top 500, ploughing through work units.
So if you fancy making F@H's computing power a Petaflop + a little bit more, why not join in too? And jump on the glory train by joining the HEXUS.community folding team, helping us edge further still up the team ladder.
If you've got the CPU time (and electricity) to spare, do a good thing today.
