Project Listing and Information

[Ares]

Current Projects/Teams

Folding@Home
Studies Protein Folding for advances in reasearch for diseases like Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease
Team Number: 13764
Webpage: http://folding.stanford.edu/
Download: http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

Seti@Home
Analyzes SETI data, which is radio frequencies from outerspace, in attempt to determine if we are alone in the Universe.
Join Team URL: http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/create_account_form.php?teamid=32069
Webpage: http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Download: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

B.U.R.P.
BURP aims to develop a publicly distributed system for rendering 3D animations.
Team Number: 317
Webpage: http://burp.boinc.dk
Download: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

Einstein@Home
Analyzes research data to find Pulsar stars.
Join Team URL: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/create_account_form.php?teamid=2630
Webpage: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
Download: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

Predictor@Home
Work is aimed at testing and evaluating new algorithms and methods of protein structure prediction.
Join Team URL: http://predictor.scripps.edu/create_account_form.php?teamid=1351
Webpage: http://predictor.scripps.edu/
Download: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

[Noctys]

Thanks, I'll join the team. :)

[Masis]

Nice new addition here. I like. Been a while since I've done Seti, and last time I checked the site was Kapoot.

[Silverwolf]

Think I'll look into SETI also. 8)

[shuggs]

Would someone mind explaining to me how this works?

[Ares]

Sure I will try. There are many research projects out there that need huge amounts of computer power to calculate stuff. The problem is that the super computers needed would cost Billions, and would still take too long. Enter distributed computing.

You download the software from the research site you wish to help out (SETI@home, Folding@home...), and install it on your computer. Your computer will then download work packets from their servers, and run calculations on it using your unused GHz. (i.e. When you are web browsing, or not even using your computer, the Processor is not doing very much, so the program will use these extra processor cycles to run the work calculations). The result of this is that with enough users, the research projects can do thousands of years of work in a few weeks, with little to no cost on their end. A lot of them also offer the users some extras, such as in Einstein@Home, I believe that any pulsars found by your computer, you will get a chance to name. Stuff like that.

I have always thought that this was a ingenius solution to the problem, and since it only takes a few minutes to set up, I enjoy helping out.

I hope this explains it a little better.