Folding Forum

I have quite powerful powerpc (ibm power8) system with nvidia tesla and ubuntu 14.10 which I could try using for Folding. However there is no package for ppc64 or ppc64le architecture or source code (which I could compile and run) - so I cannot really run this software on my setup. Any ideas how to fit that?

Welcome to the folding forum.

The source code for some portions of the folding client are intentionally kept non-public so that the science can be validated and prevent alterations that would allow persons to connect, process work units, and return ones that could be invalid. The PG does have a FAQ on this - https://folding.stanford.edu/home/faq/faq-opensource/. So while the folding cores are based on open source software, there is no complete source code that you would be able to compile. In addition the Terms of Use would prohibit doing so, as that would require modifications to the source code, etc.

Unless the PG saw a sufficiently large group of potential contributors running IBM Power systems, I don't believe there is much chance of them using their limited development resources to create a client and cores suitable for this architecture. The last PowerPC code released to support folding on PowerPC based Mac's was released many years ago and projects ended for those about 3 or 4 years ago. No current consumer level machines use this architecture.

If you can make a case for IBM Power being added as a supported platform, you can post that on the official Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/foldingathome/. That is where PG takes these kind of suggestions and may respond.

Would it be possible to virtualize a x86-64 Linux that could run the client with enough access to hardware to expose and use the Tesla ?