Rosetta@Home: Contribute Spare Compute Cycles to COVID-19 Science

[LexxM3]

With all the lockdowns and slowdowns, shall we have some computational fun for a good cause? By simply running a free program, you can help advance research in medicine, clean energy, and materials science. There are two popular initiatives (related and complimentary, but not duplicates of each other) out there, both contributing to current and new COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 work: Rosetta@Home and Folding@Home.

I think Rosetta@Home is currently better organized and the more stable of the two. Take a look, consider, and if you decide to contribute, join the Rosetta@Home team "Bimmerpost" that I just created. Here is some reading and links to get started quickly:

* Recent background: https://www.ipd.uw.edu/2020/02/roset...g-coronavirus/
* Rosetta@Home Get Started: https://boinc.bakerlab.org/
* Bimmerpost Team Page: https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/t...p?teamid=19111

[ikheetleon]

Good initiative. Will check it out tomorrow.

[LexxM3]

A couple of notes on adding Folding@Home to the fray ...

Folding@Home is biased towards GPU and Rosetta@Home is biased toward CPU workloads. F@H is pretty disorganized and I found their local management tools to be less mature, but they also do good work. F@H is also having trouble keeping up with supply — there is plenty to work on, but their servers can't dish it out fast enough and so machines end up idling a lot.

So what I've done is install both and used some of the config in both facilities to share the time. Basically, if F@H has workload, I bias towards that and otherwise run R@H. I created an F@H Bimmerpost team as well (team number: 243241), but my primary F@H contributions have been a different team (work-related), so I have almost nothing on Bimmerpost F@H as of this note. It is still also a great cause, however.

Something to consider doing. Basically, if you want to contribute and simplicity, just do Rosetta@Home. If you are willing to play with configs and, in particular have lots of GPU resources to contribute, do Folding@Home and/or both and config to share time appropriately.

[mandomedic122]

Anything to curb this virus will help. I will look into it and probalby install the Rosetta@Home app.

Thanks for the info!!!!!

Edit: Done!!!!

[LexxM3]

So we've got 7 Bimmerpost members contributing now, although 1 seems to be stalled a bit so only 6 are on the charts. That relatively small group is now in top 20% of teams contributing to Rosetta@Home in the world! I am solidly in the middle of our pack, easily outrun by 2 of our European members (but all 3 of us are individually in the top 5% of all individual contributors in the world!). Point is, even a small number of people can make an impressive difference.

https://www.boincstats.com/stats/14/team/detail/19111

Join now, let's get to top 10% (which actually is a much harder step than 20% :-), but let's aim high).

[ikheetleon]

Originally Posted by LexxM3

So we've got 7 Bimmerpost members contributing now, although 1 seems to be stalled a bit so only 6 are on the charts. That relatively small group is now in top 20% of teams contributing to Rosetta@Home in the world! I am solidly in the middle of our pack, easily outrun by 2 of our European members (but all 3 of us are individually in the top 5% of all individual contributors in the world!). Point is, even a small number of people can make an impressive difference.

https://www.boincstats.com/stats/14/team/detail/19111

Join now, let's get to top 10% (which actually is a much harder step than 20% :-), but let's aim high).

There are about 12k teams. Our team is at spot 137. So we should be already in the top 10% right? If we can make it to <120, we're in the top 1% even. Or am I missing something?

https://www.boincstats.com/stats/14/team/list/16/100/0

[LexxM3]

Team Bimmerpost is now in the top 5% of all contributing teams to Rosetta@Home and that's with just 6 active members contributing their computer time. One of our member (ikheetleon) is individually at top 1% of individual contributors!

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/t...p?teamid=19111

Let's get to the top 1% of teams. We need your help, give it a shot today. Details in first post.

[LexxM3]

Update 2020-04-19: As of yesterday, Team Bimmerpost is ranked 128 by RAC metric ("Recent Average Credit") out of a little over 3000 active teams and today we moved up to 120th position. In other words, we are solidly in the 5th-percentile and that's with just 6 active members (7th member has only idled so far)! Our top two members are individually in the 1st-percentile.

So, let's get off the bench and join the computation effort. Information in first post.

[LexxM3]

I haven't posted about this in a while, but the computers controlled by the small team here have been busy along with thousands of others all this time. The Rosetta@Home team just published some results and brief video about it. Worth a watch, this isn't BS, it's impactful work: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ODEIN5V3yLg

[9M71]

Thanks for the update. Its pretty crazy to see how far along folding@home has come!

[LexxM3]

Originally Posted by 9M71

Thanks for the update. Its pretty crazy to see how far along folding@home has come!

F@H is a separate action, our team has been focused on Rosetta@Home and this video is of R@H results. I mostly like R@H due to way better software and server stability, but both efforts are pretty phenomenal.

[9M71]

Originally Posted by LexxM3

F@H is a separate action, our team has been focused on Rosetta@Home and this video is of R@H results. I mostly like R@H due to way better software and server stability, but both efforts are pretty phenomenal.

whoops I didn't realize they were different. Either way, good causes all around.