In a tweet that linked to more info on a Reddit post, Nvidia implored PC gamers to donate extra GPU power to take down the novel coronavirus that’s disrupting the world’s wellness.
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Nvidia joined forces with Folding@home (FAH), a disease-research organization working on creating computer simulations of COVID-19 to better understand the disease’s behavior so it can develop therapeutic solutions. “To help tackle coronavirus, we want to understand how these viral proteins work and how we can design therapeutics to stop them,” FAH wrote in a recent blog. “Our specialty is in using computer simulations to understand proteins’ moving parts.” These research-focused simulations require intensive computer calculations, which is why Nvidia is urging its gamer fanbase to relinquish some unused computer power to help FAH fight against the destabilizing virus that’s interrupting the world’s regularly scheduled programming. FAH is encouraging people to download its software application in order to grab some computer power to juice up their intensive experiments. Once a user installs it, it downloads a small program on their computer, which returns results to Stanford researchers. You can even choose the disease research you’d like to donate your computer power to. By default, the software will run on your GPU. “While you keep going with your everyday activities, your computer will be working to help us find cures for diseases like cancer, ALS, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Influenza and many others,” FAH wrote. The response to FAH’s COVID-19 research project was overwhelming, which caused some server-side issues for the organization. “Please be patient and keep your software on while the servers try to serve everyone with their work-units for computation! Thank you for all of this! PC can save the world!” an FAH spokesperson wrote on Reddit. FAH noted that they’ve seen some GPUs give their research an uptick in speed that’s 20 to 30 times faster, but they were also transparent about the fact that the gift-giving PC user may have to sacrifice some system performance for their generosity.
