Folding Forum

Let's say Stanford didn't need any of us. They had no more work units. Your computers relax. What distributed computing would you move on to?

BOINC:

Biology
Malaria Control — for stochastic modelling of the clinical epidemiology and natural history of malaria.
POEM@Home — models protein folding using Anfinsen's dogma.[1]
Proteins@home — deduces DNA sequence, given a protein.
Rosetta@home — tests the assembly of specific proteins, using appropriate fragments of better-known proteins.
SIMAP — compiles a database of protein similarities using the FASTA algorithm, and protein domains using InterPro.
TANPAKU — to predict protein structures from amino acid sequence.
Earth Sciences
Climateprediction.net — tries to produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century.
Physics and Astronomy
BRaTS@Home — to study gravitational lensing.[2]
Einstein@Home — uses data from LIGO and GEO 600 to detect gravitational waves.
LHC@home — simulates particles travelling in the Large Hadron Collider.
SETI@home — Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence
Mathematics
ABC@Home — attempt to solve the ABC conjecture problem.
SZTAKI Desktop Grid — searches for generalized binary number systems.
TSP - studies the traveling salesman problem.[3]

[edit]
Upcoming Projects

These projects are considered to be in the Alpha or Beta development stages.
Mathematics
Distributed Exact Cover Solver - solves exact cover problems using a version of the Dancing Links algorithm.[4] (Alpha)
PrimeGrid — searches for titanic primes. (Alpha)
Rectilinear Crossing Number — finds the lowest crossing number for a given array of points on a graph.[5] (Beta)
Riesel Sieve — attempts to solve the Riesel problem. (Beta)
3x+1@home - studies the Collatz conjecture.[6] (Alpha)
WEP-M+2 - investigates the factorization of Mersenne prime numbers. (Alpha)
Yoyo@home - finds optimal Golomb rulers using the OGR application from distributed.net.[7] (Beta)
Internet
DepSpid — builds up a database containing the dependencies between individual web sites and groups of web sites, and collects statistical data about the structure of the World Wide Web.[8] (Alpha)
Project Neuron — records, observes and analyzes BOINC activity and data with a view to developing metrics.[9] (Beta)
XtremLab — measures the free resources available on desktop PC's involved in large-scale distributed computing. Results will be used to improve the design of systems, such as BOINC. (Alpha)
Cryptography
HashClash@home — extends both theoretical and experimental results on collision generation for the MD5 and SHA1 hash functions. (Closed-Beta)
SHA-1 Collision Search - searches for a collision in the SHA1 hash function.[10] (Alpha)
Games
Chess960@Home — studies Chess960 in order to develop some basics of theory in this chess variant. (Alpha)
NQueens@Home - simulates the eight queens puzzle.[11] (Alpha)
Project Sudoku - searches for the smallest possible start configuration of Sudoku.[12] (Alpha)
Eternity2.net - searches for a solution to the Eternity II puzzle.[13] (Alpha)
Art
BURP — to develop a publicly distributed system for rendering 3D animations. (Alpha)
RenderFarm@Home — a publicly distributed system for rendering.[14] (Alpha)
Biology
Artificial Intelligence System — simulates the human brain, complete with artificial consciousness and artificial general intelligence. (Alpha)
Cels@Home - studies cell adhesion.[15] (Alpha)
Docking@Home — models protein-ligand docking.[16] (Closed alpha)
Genetic Life - studies the evolution of artificial life.[17] (Alpha)
Hydrogen@Home - searches for the most efficient method of producing biohydrogen.[18] (Alpha)
The Lattice Project — studies a variety of problems in biology. (Beta)
MindModeling@Home - builds cognitive models of the human mind. (Beta)
PS3GRID — Full-atom molecular biology simulations, specially optimized for the Cell microprocessor in PlayStation 3.[19] (Beta)
Predictor@home — uses homology modeling to compare proteins of known structure with similar, but lesser known, proteins, and then constructs predictions for those proteins. (Alpha)
RALPH@home — Rosetta@home official alpha test project.
SciLINC — indexes a digitised library of plant species.[20][21] (Alpha)
Second Computing is a general-purpose DC project. Its first application assesses biopolymer dynamics.[22] (Alpha)
Superlink@Technion — uses genetic linkage analysis to identify genes that are responsible for genetic disorders.[23] (Beta)
Virtual Prairie models the behavior of clonal colonies in a prairie ecosystem.[24] (Alpha)
Astronomy
Cosmology@Home — searches for the model that best describes our universe and finds the range of physical cosmology models that agree with the available data. (Beta)
Milkyway@home — Research in the gravitational potential of the Milkyway galaxy using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.[25] (Alpha)
Orbit@home — monitoring the impact hazard posed by near-Earth objects. (Alpha)
SETI@home beta — is currently the test environment for SETI@home programs destined for public use.
Physics
Leiden Classical — General Classical Dynamics Grid for any scientist or science student.[26] (Alpha)
LHC@home Alpha — LHC@Home official alpha test project.[27] (Closed Alpha)
Magnetism@home - studies the magnetization of materials in nanotechnology.[28] (Alpha)
Nano-Hive@Home — simulates large-scale nanotechnology systems. (Alpha)
Pirates@home — currently being used to test BOINC's forum software for possible use by another project: Interactions in Understanding the Universe.
QMC@Home — study the structure and reactivity of molecules using Quantum Monte Carlo. (Beta)
RND@home - calculates the most efficient arrangement of radio antennae, treating it as an NP-hard optimization problem, and using the population-based incremental learning algorithm.[29] (Alpha)
Spinhenge@Home — models the spin of elementary particles using the principles of quantum mechanics. (Beta)
μFluids@Home — simulates two-phase flow in microgravity and microfluidics problems. (Alpha)
Ibercivis — Nuclear fusion research, protein docking, materials. (Alpha)
Earth Sciences
APS@Home — examines the effects of atmospheric dispersion as it relates to the accuracy of measurements used in climate prediction.[30] (Alpha)
Quake Catcher Network — uses accelerometers in, or attached to, internet-connected computers to detect earthquakes.[31] (Alpha)

Distributed.net

Search for optimal Golomb rulers
Try to break RC5-72 encryption.

Parabon computation:
Compute Against Cancer — cancer research

World community grid:

Human Proteome Folding Project - Phase 2 — predicting functions of proteins in conjunction with rosetta@home.
FightAIDS@Home — identify candidate drugs that have the right shape and chemical characteristics to block HIV protease.
Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together — uncover novel drugs to cure dengue hemorrhagic fever, hepatitis C, West Nile encephalitis, and Yellow fever.
AfricanClimate@Home — develop more accurate climate models of specific regions in Africa.
Help Conquer Cancer — improve the results of protein X-ray crystallography in order to increase understanding of cancer and its treatment.
Nutritious Rice for the World — Predict the protein structures of rice in order to help rice breeders create more abundant, resilient and nutritious harvests.

Other:
Mathematics
15k Search [2] Automated search for large titanic prime numbers, of special forms.
Background Pi [3] Computes decimal digits of pi using digit extraction method.
Cuboid simulation project (important for industry, biophysics and statistics) [4] You roll a six-sided die with parallel faces but non-equal edge lengths. What is the probability to land on each surface ?
GIMPS — Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, dedicated to finding ever larger Mersenne primes.
NFSNET — uses the Number Field Sieve to factor increasingly large integers.
PiSegment — Chinese Volunteer Computing Project with the dual purpose of looking for a large number of digits for the number Pi and making Volunteer Computing more popular in China. Only a Windows client only at this time though.
Seventeen or Bust — attempts to find prime numbers in 17 sequences, to solve the Sierpinski problem. So far primes in 11 sequences have been found.
Wieferich@Home — searches for new Wieferich primes.[32]
Internet
AssessGRID [5] Addresses obstacles to a wide adoption of Grid technologies by bringing risk management and assessment to this field, enabling use of Grid computing in business and society.
A-Ware [6] will develop a stable, supported, commercially exploitable, high quality technology to give easy access to Grid resources.
BREIN — uses the Semantic Web and Multi-agent Systems to build simple and reliable Grid systems for business. [7]
Cohesion Platform [8] is a Java-based modular Peer-to-Peer multi-application Desktop Grid computing platform for irregularly structured problems developed at the University of Tübingen (Germany).
DIMES — is a distributed computing project which maps the structure and evolution of the Internet infrastructure, allowing users to see how the Internet looks from their home.
Enabling Grids for E-sciencE
GridCOMP [9] — provides an advanced component platform for an effective invisible Grid.
GridECON [10] takes a user-oriented perspective and creates solutions to grid challenges to promote the wide-spread use of grids.
Hours — Ongoing project HarmOny and Useful Resource Sharing. Attempts to make use of the trust management and network economics to implement the heterogeneous resource sharing. Currently focusing on the resource allocation in the science grid like Teragrid and OSG. This project is run by the MIST group of Computer Science at Wayne State University.[11]
JHDC — Open source programmable Java distributed computing system.
Legion — Grid computing platform developed at the University of Virginia.
Majestic-12 — Uses a distributed web crawler program to index web sites for a distributed search engine.[12]
NESSI-GRID [13] aims to provide a unified view for European research in Services Architectures and Software Infrastructures that will define technologies, strategies and deployment policies fostering new, open, industrial solutions and societal applications that enhance the safety, security and well-being of citizens.
OMII-Europe [14] an EU-funded project which has been established to source key software components that can interoperate across several heterogeneous Grid middleware platforms.
OMII-UK [15] provides free Open Source software and support to enable a sustained future for the UK e-Research community.
OurGrid — aims to deliver grid technology that can be used today by current users to solve present problems. To achieve this goal, OurGrid chooses a different trade-off compared to most grid projects. It forfeits supporting arbitrary applications in favor of supporting only Bag-of-Tasks applications.
ScottNet NCG — This is a distributed neural computing grid. A private commercial effort in continuous operation since 1995. This system performs a series of functions including data synchronization amongst databases, mainframe systems, and other data repositories. E-Commerce transaction processing, automated research and data retrieval, content analysis, web site monitoring, scripted and dynamic user emulation, shipping and fulfillment API integration and management, RSS and NNTP monitoring and analysis, real time security enforcement, and backup / restore functionality.[16]
Storage@home — distributed storage infrastructure developed to solve the problem of backing up and sharing petabytes of scientific results using a distributed model of volunteer managed hosts. Data is maintained by a mixture of replication and monitoring, with repairs done as needed.
Biology
Bio4All ToolKits - genetic annotation tools for responsible research [33]
CommunityTSC - design drugs to treat patients afflicted with Tuberous sclerosis.
D2OL — works to discover drug candidates against Anthrax, Smallpox, Ebola and SARS and other potentially devastating infectious diseases. (Uses Java VM)
Evolution@Home — addressing fundamental questions about evolution and population genetics.
Folding@Home — run by Stanford University and whose goal is to understand why proteins misfold.
SharkGrid — is a small grid for whale shark (Rhincdon typus) photo-identification.[34]
Chemistry
Chemomentum [17] evaluation and risk assessment of chemicals.
Earth Sciences
Climateprediction.net — seeks to forecast the climate of the Earth in the 21st century. The original windows client is in process of being retired. At this time the windows client is used for Open University classes only.
Art
Electric Sheep — An open source screen-saver for animating and evolving abstract animations.
Physics
EON — run by The University of Texas at Austin and whose goal is to understand condensed matter physics. EON uses Cosm client architecture and also Fida. [18]
Muon1 [19] — Optimises the design of a particle collider which will be used to measure the mass of neutrinos.
Stardust@home — Scans/Analyzes the collection grid from a recent NASA mission to capture particles from a comet.
Cryptography
freerainbowtables.com — generating perfect rainbow tables.[35]
M4 Project [20] - Decrypting Enigma messages from World War II.
Miscellaneous
BEinGRID — Business Experiments in Grid. Also See Gridipedia
Gstock — Investment Strategy Search, dedicated to finding ever better technical analysis strategies.
MoneyBee — Generates stock forecasts by application of artificial intelligence with the aid of artificial neural networks.
Perplex City — an Alternate Reality Game created by the British company Mind Candy, features puzzle cards which can be solved to earn points on a leaderboard and earn clues to help understand the game. One of these cards, "The 13th Labour", features what players have determined to be a block of RC5-64bit encryption, which is now being brute-forced, using a distributed computing client created by one player.
StrataGenie [21] — searches for trading strategies in intraday stock market data and distributes trading signals to subscribers.

(Wikipedia)

Personally I would go for
-Climateprediction.net because it is extremely important in 2008 to know as much as we can about the environment
-Hydrogen@Home because it might be the energy carrier of the future
-Ibercivis because fision is interesting if we can make it a source of energy
-Nutritious Rice for the World because we have a food crisis

I would have made a poll but there are only 10 options.

Rosetta@home - more proteins
LHC@home - studying particle physics at the moment
Hydrogen@home - same reasons as you

I think that the Pande Group said they will have enough work to last a lifetime - I hope that is true because I don't want to have to switch

John Naylor wrote:I think that the Pande Group said they will have enough work to last a lifetime - I hope that is true because I don't want to have to switch

If we get the proteins figured out we can do a cell next.

I'd switch to Rosetta@Home again. I still remember when my old Pentium 4 discovered the lowest energy structure for a model that was running over a year ago - I was very happy about that discovery

Sahkolihaa wrote:I'd switch to Rosetta@Home again. I still remember when my old Pentium 4 discovered the lowest energy structure for a model that was running over a year ago - I was very happy about that discovery

Why did you switched to FAH?

Well climate change is big wury to me, I live in a country which is famed for it's strugles both with and on the water but if the sea's would raise to much no levie or man made wall can keep it out. So if Pande called it quits, I would probably move to that project.

Ivoshiee wrote:Why did you switched to FAH?

I like to try other projects once in a while. I'm also interested in GPGPU, which FAH is the only project with a GPU client

Hydrogen@Home - searches for the most efficient method of producing biohydrogen.[18] (Alpha)Magnetism@home - studies the magnetization of materials in nanotechnology.[28] (Alpha)
Nano-Hive@Home — simulates large-scale nanotechnology systems. (Alpha)
Nutritious Rice for the World — Predict the protein structures of rice in order to help rice breeders create more abundant, resilient and nutritious harvests.


In fact, I would support projects that determine and create future technologies (critic of seti@home i guess =D). For instance, i would like to see large-scale grid projects that can be used to stimulate the effects of environmental solutions to the world, rather than merely have "experts" discussing them. A great example would be biofuels, which as we all know have turned out to be a disaster so far due to its divergence from the original intends of its advocators (to reduce wastage of stuff such as corn shells/cellulose waste).

For instance, scientists wanted to find out the effects of say, mass-planting algae in the oceans to soak up carbon dioxide. Scientists say that this would cause a great disbalance in the ecosystem. Rather than talk about it, stimulate it! =D

John Naylor wrote:
I think that the Pande Group said they will have enough work to last a lifetime - I hope that is true because I don't want to have to switch

I agree!

The truth is IF it happened, I would hope the goal would be complete. I see this as just the beginning though, the critical first stage to a huge change in the way we are able to live our lives. Quite possibly an evolutionary stage for us because in the end, if we can learn to manipulate the way our cells grow, we will live longer and healthier disease free lives. I feel this is the real goal here and there's a lot of work to do, of which I am happy to be a part of.

The way I see it : Stage 1 - How does folding work, Stage 2 - How do we make it work for us, Stage 3 - if I'm here by then, it will be because of the work done we have all done here.

If I am completely off base here and it did end, I would probably sell almost everything and save a lot of money.

John Naylor wrote:I think that the Pande Group said they will have enough work to last a lifetime - I hope that is true because I don't want to have to switch

Neither do I

If Folding at Home were to finnish, what would you do?

lol, I'd probably go ahead and get a Real Life! :p



Seriously, probably some BOINC project, like Climateprediction.net.

The fundamental question that you're asking is about 50 years too early since there is no possiblity of FAH "finishing" within the current generation.

Moreover, I'm going to lock this thread because it violates our policy about recruitment. We prohibit recruitment on this forum so that it stays team neutral and it can meet the primary purpose of the forum which is to support those who are having trouble with FAH. If I replaced "BOINC" or the other projects in the first post with "Team 99999" it would clearly be team recruitment.

BOINC is a good project, too, as are the other projects that you mention, but please don't expect to get folks to join your team by advertising it here.

Thread locked.