Dear Rosetta@home community-

I'm writing an article for Wired about you. Please share your experiences with me. What are the extreme highs and lows of crunching with Rosetta@home? (I know of someone who lost their job because they had converted the computer infrastructure of a large business into a mega-crunching operation. I also know of someone who took solace from crunching candidate drug targets after his family was hit hard by cancer.) I'm focusing on just this summer's activity for this article. Did anyone have a funny/extreme/moving/bizarre Rosetta@home experience this summer?

Thanks in advance... and keep on crunching,
John Bohannon
(www.johnbohannon.org)

Probably not newsworthy, but my best CASP 8 moment is when I realized that my 8-core Mac Pro was the #1 single-computer doing the most work for the whole project. I don't have hundreds of computers like some Rosetta@home crunchers, but it felt good to know that by having my Mac Pro crunch 24/7 (overclocked from 2.8ghz to 3.13ghz) it did more scientific work than any other single computer here (at least for a few weeks).

I firmly believe that computational protein prediction & design will help reduce human suffering in the next few years, possibly even solving some of the diseases of aging, keeping people healthy longer, and that's why I'm part of Rosetta@home.

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For me, the most exciting part of CASP8 was actually working on solving the protein my self using the Fold.it! game. And knowing that my own prediction had a chance at being submitted to CASP. We later heard that some of the predictions that came out of Fold.it! were better then the majority of the scientist teams.

It is truely a new world we're in, where anyone can download a game from the internet, and play it enough they develop an intuitive sense about how proteins work that the PhD's that have been studying these things for decades, do not have.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Well, I could not participate on CASP 8 as much as I wanted, because I had a lot of problems with my computer at home connecting to the rosetta servers.
On the other hand I am still trying to establish distributed computing for science and for bigger computing things at the company where I work. And I am making really small steps. First time I asked the "IT-boss" (about one year ago) his answer was like "Grid computing ?Don't think we need this. What is this, anyway ?" ... Now he is at least "interested. Maybe next year we could start trying it on some computers here."
So I think we will start 2010 ;)

Personally, I think distributed computing in common and for science specifically is a way to help in solving big problems in a shorter time. In a time where computers become faster every day and most are only used for office stuff, why not contribute the unused computing time to science ?



(excuse the english, it's my first day ;)

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John,

I've sent you a Private Message on the forum - let me know if you don't receive it.

Tom Reader

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Alver Valley Software Ltd - Contributing ALL our spare computing power to BOINC, 24x365.

According to the WHO, 1979 was a landmark year, in that smallpox was eradicated in that year. That was a major accomplishment, because smallpox was a terrible disease, the Variola major variant causing death in about one third of cases.

Compare that to HIV, which is having a devastating effect in parts of the world. Dr. Baker has a clear roadmap for work towards an HIV vaccine, crunching for Rosetta@home means I can be a part of that effort, and it gives me a shot, albeit a small one, of having the computer that actually finds the cure.

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Thanks very much for sharing your experiences. Keep them coming! -John

I run Rosetta and other deserving projects on my computers 24/7 and on anyone elses with their permission of course.

Apart from crunching I have no interesting stories to tell although my mum died of Ovarian Cancer which her doctor never detected (too busy diagnosing people over the phone) anyway that's another story.

I would like to see the human race rid of disease, it must be the most distressing part of life.

What does amaze me about Rosetta specifically and Distributed Computing in general is the lack of awareness in the general population and if they are aware they either don't care or are frightened it will damage their computer.

I try to garner support for DC but too little avail. People are so apathetic or ignorant of the benefits to themselves and more importantly their children in furthering our understanding of all sciences and particularly cures for disease with minimal use of our primitive pharmaceuticals.

Another problem I find is that a lot of people buy cheap of the shelf PC's with poor hardware and lack any knowledge of how to keep their PC running well which reults in intensive crunching causing them problems and nothing you can tell them that it's NOT DC that's the problem but their NEW PC that they just paid £299 or £399 for is a pile of *****

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I don't have any stories as such - i've been running DC projects since I first heard about an Oxford uni one (Think on United Devices) in '99 I think - maybe 2000. Then when UD didn't take the updated version of Think, it's creator (Keith Davies) created Find-a-drug which I joined very soon after. The client was very lightweight - it didn't require much memory, and supported running multiple clients from a central server over a network etc. FaD was very competitive (in a good way!) - there were battles between individuals, teams (I joined XPC while they were trying to keep TSC! Russia off the top spot!) and between countries, which of course was great for the project.

FaD announced the end of the project just after Rosetta had started up so it was an obvious choice for a lot of people - I don't know if the threads are still available, but there was quite a large influx over the space of a month or so. The projects have very similar goals, although a lot of people didn't like the BOINC platform at the time (it's improved a lot since then).

I too run Rosetta on anything I can get my hands on - most of my machines belong to family, friends or colleagues. If i fix a machine for someone then there's no fee but I put Rosetta on it... everyone's happy!

What does amaze me about Rosetta specifically and Distributed Computing in general is the lack of awareness in the general population and if they are aware they either don't care or are frightened it will damage their computer.

It surprises me how many people in IT have no idea about DC- most have heard of SETI but that's it. My background is Biology so I guess that helps undstand the purpose of the project - a lot of people in the past have said they don't want to work on a research project - they want to work on something that's actively searching for cures (which of course Rosetta has been working on at times), but there's a lack of understanding and impatience in some cases...

Another problem I find is that a lot of people buy cheap of the shelf PC's with poor hardware and lack any knowledge of how to keep their PC running well which reults in intensive crunching causing them problems and nothing you can tell them that it's NOT DC that's the problem but their NEW PC that they just paid £299 or £399 for is a pile of *****

I've found that too - it was a lot worse a few years ago, especially with pentium 4's. I've found that people often blame BOINC for a problem in the first instance, remove it, and find they still have the problem but of course BOINC often doesn't go back on the machine.

It might be worth posting on a few forums - most have a DC section. Here's a couple to start the list off:

XPC
Anandtech
DPC (i'm sure they won't mind a post in English)
BOINC@Australia

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One quick thing: I find it very sad that there's probably over 99.99% of all computing power in the workd that is idle right now.

Would love to see computer makers like Dell, HP and Apple install distributed computing software by default on their machines, and the first time you boot you have a popup that explains what it is and gives you the option to turn it on or off.

That'd be a really cool thing to put in the WIRED story, actually. Might actually get that idea to the right people.

Cheers,

Michael Graham Richard

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if they did that we could triple our t flops or more in a short time...

One quick thing: I find it very sad that there's probably over 99.99% of all computing power in the workd that is idle right now.

Would love to see computer makers like Dell, HP and Apple install distributed computing software by default on their machines, and the first time you boot you have a popup that explains what it is and gives you the option to turn it on or off.

That'd be a really cool thing to put in the WIRED story, actually. Might actually get that idea to the right people.

Cheers,

Michael Graham Richard

I crunch because a person close to me has been diagnosed with HIV. Being my background is computer science instead of biology, the best way I can contribute to eliminating all the horrible diseases that afflict mankind, is by providing computing resources for the brilliant but underfunded researchers. By working together and each of us bringing our unique strengths to table I really believe science and distributed computing can change the world.

Dear Rosetta@home community-

I'm writing an article for Wired about you. Please share your experiences with me. What are the extreme highs and lows of crunching with Rosetta@home? (I know of someone who lost their job because they had converted the computer infrastructure of a large business into a mega-crunching operation. I also know of someone who took solace from crunching candidate drug targets after his family was hit hard by cancer.) I'm focusing on just this summer's activity for this article. Did anyone have a funny/extreme/moving/bizarre Rosetta@home experience this summer?

Thanks in advance... and keep on crunching,
John Bohannon
(www.johnbohannon.org)

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I read the article in one of the Seattle papers and joined in.
I had a mother in law die last year of abdominal cancer, so since my computer was idling I thought why not join a local program that will use my computer to help define the cancer cells one day.

I am not a hard core cruncher, just casual and looking for real projects to join and work on.

if they did that we could triple our t flops or more in a short time...

Tripling is a pessimistic estimate. I'd estimate that distributed computing in general would see a major increase of interest from many universities and companies because of all the extra power available, and most good project that are currently running would probably get hundreds of times more crunchers than they do now in a matter of months.

Just look at how many computers are sold each year and how fast those machines are. Even if only a small fraction of those decide to turn on the DC feature, that'd be massive.

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if anyone has an extra 3 million dollars they could get a 30 sec spot on a superbowl commercial...bet we could get some pflops then...but even then i dont think many companies would lend a hand with their computers.the schools maybe. ...>>>>when i started we where at 28 tflops

if they did that we could triple our t flops or more in a short time...

Tripling is a pessimistic estimate. I'd estimate that distributed computing in general would see a major increase of interest from many universities and companies because of all the extra power available, and most good project that are currently running would probably get hundreds of times more crunchers than they do now in a matter of months.

Just look at how many computers are sold each year and how fast those machines are. Even if only a small fraction of those decide to turn on the DC feature, that'd be massive.

if anyone has an extra 3 million dollars they could get a 30 sec spot on a superbowl commercial...bet we could get some pflops then...but even then i dont think many companies would lend a hand with their computers.the schools maybe. ...>>>>when i started we where at 28 tflops

I think it depends how it's done. Recent versions of boinc can have DC run at x% CPU usage. Many people would probably run projects at 10-20%, or on just 1 out of 4 cores, and never notice it, especially projects that have small RAM footprints.

Google used to include Folding@home in its google toolbar, but that has stopped a while ago.

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was there a reason why they stopped with the tool bar?

if anyone has an extra 3 million dollars they could get a 30 sec spot on a superbowl commercial...bet we could get some pflops then...but even then i dont think many companies would lend a hand with their computers.the schools maybe. ...>>>>when i started we where at 28 tflops

I think it depends how it's done. Recent versions of boinc can have DC run at x% CPU usage. Many people would probably run projects at 10-20%, or on just 1 out of 4 cores, and never notice it, especially projects that have small RAM footprints.

Google used to include Folding@home in its google toolbar, but that has stopped a while ago.

was there a reason why they stopped with the tool bar?

I don't know the reason..

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Google Compute

Google Compute was a separately downloadable add-on for the Google Toolbar which allowed participation in a distributed computing project to help scientific research. It started on a limited basis in March 2002[1] and ended in October 2005.[2] [3]

Google Compute enabled a user's computer to help solve challenging scientific problems when the computer would otherwise be idle. When one enabled Google Compute, the computer downloaded a small piece of a large research problem and performed calculations on it that were then included with results from thousands of other computers. Google Compute was only available for the English language version of the Google Toolbar.[4]

The effort's first, and so far only, contribution was to Folding@home, a non-profit endeavor to model the process of protein folding in order to better understand and cure many different diseases. The Google Compute homepage recommends that users wishing to continue contributions to the project download the official Folding@home client.

I'm crunching both to help online friends and to help a few projects (such as Rosetta@home) that may eventually help my health problem, diabetes. I've found a BOINC project that mentions they're already trying to help some forms of diabetes, but since it's still in beta test, I don't consider it ready for me to participate in yet.