There are still so many open questions about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus operates, and there are some international scientific collaborations working to answer them using massive amounts of computing power. They can be set to only run while your computer is idle, so they won’t slow anything down. They work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. They also show you fun stats about how much computing power you have contributed.
I have been crunching these projects for years and would be glad to answer any questions people have about them, though don’t expect me to be able to answer any thing about covalent bonds and binding receptors. 😅
BOINC Projects:
BOINC projects are great because you can participate in multiple projects at once through a single program. BOINC is based out of the University California (Berkeley). It is suggested to sign up for multiple projects as you will still have data to crunch even when projects go down for maintenance, etc.
Project #1: SiDock
Founded in 2020, this is an international open science collaboration working on an open source anti-viral for COVID and they have identified a number of good target sites. You can see some of their published papers here. Note on the registration form it asks for an “invite code” as an anti-spam measure which is Crunch_4Science. It’s listed on the main page of the site but easy to miss!
Project #2: World Community Grid
This project has been around since the 90’s and puts computing resources towards various health research causes including childhood cancer and diabetes. Right now, they have a sub-project focusing on COVID-19. Currently based out of the Krembil Research Institute.
Project #3: Rosetta@home
Based out of the university of Washington and running for over a decade is Rosetta@home. They produced the first accurate 3D model of sars-cov-2 which was used by researchers around the world and was critical foundational science for the development of the vaccine. A vaccine made directly from this work produced many millions doses. Work units are sparsely produced here, so I’d suggest attaching to at least one other BOINC project as well.
Folding@home
Folding@home is probably the most well-known volunteer computing project and at the start of the pandemic was the largest supercomputer in the world. They focus on protein folding which has implications across health research and have several subprojects related to COVID.
DreamLab
DreamLab runs on Android devices and has various medical research projects it works on including some related to COVID. You can pick and choose which to contribute to, and it only runs while your phone is plugged in and charged, so it won’t drain your battery.
FAQ:
Will running BOINC or Folding@home slow down my computer?
Each of these tools can be configured to run only while the computer is idle, so no, it will not slow anything down while you’re using it.
Will running BOINC or Folding@home harm my computer?
The short answer for desktop computers is no. Crunching will not harm your computer, computers after all are designed to compute! While crunching does utilize your CPU/GPU heavily, every other component in your computer will likely fail first (your hard drive, OS, etc) or become obsolete before your CPU dies. Many computers crunch for a decade plus with no issues, at which point they make most sense to replace from an energy perspective alone.
However, if your machine has a pre-existing problem with heating (like if it’s full of dust or running inside a cabinet), crunching can exacerbate this problem or make its symptoms more readily visible.
Laptops, on the other hand, are often built with insufficient heat exhaustion and can quickly overheat at full load. Heat will also shorten your battery life significantly. Setting your PC to only use 50% of your CPU power and not to use your GPU will keep heat manageable. With laptops, remember that warm is fine, hot is bad.