Folding@home Free Donne team



Project requirements
You need to run the Windows Operating System or have a Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3)
If you run this project on a PC, you need a powerful graphic card (ATI or nVidia), if you don't have one, you probably want to apply to the BOINC project which do not requires any special hardware (it can run on laptops).
See the Installation chapter.
Project presentation
What is protein folding?
From http://folding.stanford.edu :
Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.
Can I see an example?
Sure ! Here are some videos which shows how a protein may fold, starting from a string :
Why is it so important?
When proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.
Will it slow down or interfere with my display?
Not at all. You can continue to watch youtube videos for example, the program will halt itself instantaneously, you won't notice anything. It takes about 10% of your main processor to feed your graphic card, or less (you can easily change that, even if it's not really required).
You will maybe want to pause the program if you're a gamer, but it's probably not even needed (at least we didn't experienced any problem).

What is the model of my graphic card?
Download cpu-z and run it (it's free software) http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html (cpu-z will give you the exact model).
If you want to know a little bit more about your graphic card, download gpu-z http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/. Gpu-z can show you the load of the graphic engine.
I'm interested, where can I get more info?
Everything is on the website of the project: http://folding.stanford.edu
Installation
What should I do?
First you must check that you have a graphic card listed there: , that is:
- ATI Radeon HD 2xxx/3xxx/4xxx/5xxx and ATI FireGL Vx6xx (check http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-ATI2#ntoc39 for latest info).
- nVidia GPU supporting CUDA : http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus
Then download the High Performance client from there: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther
Finally install the program, and run it. It will create a little icon in the task bar:
you can click right on it and go to configure menu item.

Details here : http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Guide

Below is the "Advanced tab". You can change the CPU Usage Percent to any value. When set at 100% it doesn't mean that the process will take 100% of your processor time, it will take as much time needed to feed your GPU (graphic processing unit/card). In many cases that's about 10 - 15% of the total processor speed. Run the task manager and look for task named "FahCore" :

Processor usage is 10%, and about 32 MBytes (e.g. nothing) of memory is used.

The log file should look like this (you can scroll down):
# Windows GPU Systray Edition #################################################
###############################################################################
Folding@Home Client Version 6.41r2
http://folding.stanford.edu
###############################################################################
###############################################################################
Launch directory: C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\Folding@home-gpu
[00:36:35] - Ask before connecting: No
[00:36:35] - User name: Stephane (Team 209493)
[00:36:35] - User ID: 2321056242D71D19
[00:36:35] - Machine ID: 2
[00:36:35]
[00:36:35] Gpu type=1 species=4.
[00:36:35] Loaded queue successfully.
[00:36:35] Initialization complete
[00:36:35]
[00:36:35] + Processing work unit
[00:36:35] Core required: FahCore_11.exe
[00:36:35] Core found.
[00:36:35] Working on queue slot 05 [October 12 00:36:35 UTC]
[00:36:35] + Working ...
[00:36:36]
[00:36:36] *------------------------------*
[00:36:36] Folding@Home GPU Core - Beta
[00:36:36] Version 1.24 (Mon Feb 9 11:00:12 PST 2009)
[00:36:36]
[00:36:36] Compiler : Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for 80x86
[00:36:36] Build host: amoeba
[00:36:36] Board Type: AMD
[00:36:36] Core :
[00:36:36] Preparing to commence simulation
[00:36:36] - Ensuring status. Please wait.
[00:36:46] - Looking at optimizations...
[00:36:46] - Working with standard loops on this execution.
[00:36:46] - Previous termination of core was improper.
[00:36:46] - Files status OK
[00:36:46] - Expanded 98757 -> 492188 (decompressed 498.3 percent)
[00:36:46] Called DecompressByteArray: compressed_data_size=98757 data_size=492188, decompressed_data_size=492188 diff=0
[00:36:46] - Digital signature verified
[00:36:46]
[00:36:46] Project: 5734 (Run 1, Clone 542, Gen 753)
[00:36:46]
[00:36:46] Entering M.D.
[00:36:53] Will resume from checkpoint file
[00:36:53] Tpr hash work/wudata_05.tpr: 2870567357 3610573528 2118074702 3512568709 4263202226
[00:36:55] Working on Protein
[00:36:55] Client config found, loading data.
[00:36:55] Starting GUI Server
[00:36:58] Resuming from checkpoint
[00:36:58] fcCheckPointResume: retreived and current tpr file hash:
[00:36:58] 0 2870567357 2870567357
[00:36:58] 1 3610573528 3610573528
[00:36:58] 2 2118074702 2118074702
[00:36:58] 3 3512568709 3512568709
[00:36:58] 4 4263202226 4263202226
[00:36:58] Verified work/wudata_05.log
[00:36:58] Verified work/wudata_05.edr
[00:36:58] Verified work/wudata_05.xtc
[00:36:58] Completed 2%
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...
Note for the ATI users
The client run well on the Catalyst version 11.5 (but not 11.6 to 11.9). Driver packaging version 8.85.
Security issues?
None. Your computer will download a little data file and make the graphic card compute. During the first year of Folding@Home project, it was even built-in the Google Bar!
Statistics
You can find our team statistics at this address: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=209493