[dba-Tech] Cross posted - Folding at home

John W. Colby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Sun Oct 3 13:44:48 CDT 2004


I just wanted to call everyone's attention to Folding at home.  I know a lot of
you know about this project, I did and got involved for awhile (through
Google's team I think) but over time forgot about it.  

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Folding at home is a project by Stanford University which essentially builds a
mega super computer created by using our home / office computers to form a
huge network capable of thousands of times more processing power than even
the largest dedicated super computers.  

http://folding.stanford.edu/stats.html

Will take you directly to a page where you can see some statistics for the
supercomputer as it exists at this instant in time.

This system downloads an executable onto a computer which runs in the idle
thread.  This means that while the CPU utilized jumps to 100%, it is all
idle time ad if your programs need CPU cycles folding at home will not
interfere with your program in any way.

I had 4 3ghz computers sitting in my home office doing nothing.  They are
now contributing to mankind's knowledgebase.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 





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