As the number of cases of the novel Coronavirus climbs past 160,000 worldwide, scientists from Stanford University are developing a way to speed up the process for finding a cure by using the general public’s computers. The Folding@home project uses the resources of personal computers around the globe to carry out research on the disease. The initiative has been around since 2000, and has contributed significantly to combatting a number of illnesses including Parkinson’s disease, Dengue Fever and Ebola. The incredible thing is that this research is done remotely, when the owners are not using the computers themselves.
The computers do not belong to just anyone though, rather they are volunteered by the owner. When the computer is idle, or unburned by resource-heavy work, it is controlled passively by the research team. This is known as “distributed computing,” which involves doing a multitude of different tasks simultaneously on thousands of devices. In essence, these thousands of computers work as a supercomputer, but they actually have more processing power as they are not accessible by other agencies. But how might this technology help fight the Coronavirus? Well, by using the power of this network of computers, scientists can run hundreds, and even thousands, of simulations on the performance of potential cures. With the widespread deployment of distributed computing, we stand a better chance of overcoming the spread of this disease.
