Some Folding@Home Updates

[JoeH]

For those who are still interested in contributing to the Folding@Home project. I am posting some updates both good and bad on what is going on.

First some bad news, the legacy server that was providing work units for the older Version 6 OS X client went down about 10 days ago. They have not been able to get it back online and supplying work and possibly will not be able to be brought back into service. This server also provided work to clients running the Version 7 client on 32-bit Mac's with Core Duo processors.

On the good news side, at the end of October the Version 7 client was released out of beta into full release. The announcement is here - F@H V7.2.9 Full Release Available. This release includes a viewer that can display the protein being folded, and the capability to monitor and and control folding on multiple computers over network connections.

There are some further improvements planned for the V7 client software, including on OS X. This includes ones to the installer. Right now it starts up immediately and downloads work before configuration with settings such as username, team and passkey and defaults to using all available resources such as CPU cores. You can workaround that for now by temporarily disconnecting from the Internet while doing the install. This release is for OS 10.6 and later on 64-bit (Core 2 Duo or better) capable Mac's.

For those still doing F@H on PPC Mac's, the Version 5 client is still being provided work from its server.

Finally, some results posted earlier this year on Alzheimers and influenza research done by F@H:

Alzheimers

Influenza

[lazydays]

Makes me wish I still had a building full of computers to put to this use. If I were rich I think I would build a mini farm to contribute.

[M A V I C]

I haven't researched how the data has been used in a while, but has it all still been to the benefit of for-profit drug companies?

[Speedy]

Thanks for the updat, JoeH. And the tip about disconnecting from the Internet when installing the (butt ugly) client.

Pretty much sucks. I lost the Playstation version, the ability to fold on my CoreDuo Mini and two CoreDuo MacBook Pros. All because the project can't bring a server back on line? Sad.

[JoeH]

M A V I C wrote:
I haven't researched how the data has been used in a while, but has it all still been to the benefit of for-profit drug companies?

No, and it never was. All of the data is available to other researchers. Some is embargoed from free access for the year after it is published due to the agreement between NIH, etc and the journal publishers. But most researchers have access through their institution to the journals. Some datasets are available for download from an online server, others by request from the large archive of results on request to the Pande Group. The question is answered in this PDF - FoldingFAQ. The research is also not just done at Stanford, over half a dozen university labs around the world are also associated with Folding@Home.

Speedy wrote: All because the project can't bring a server back on line? Sad.

The server involved is running legacy code from at least a couple years ago. It was the last one using that code to handle a small group of projects using an older version of the folding core than is used by the rest of the Windows and Linux folders. They recently moved many of their servers to new equipment. From having to support a number of legacy servers myself in the past, I suspect some resource they needed to rebuild this server after a crash failed to make the move. Maybe they will be able to recreate the missing item, at least they have not yet made a final announcement that it will not be back.

[decay]

looks like some old Hotline software!