Nvidia urged millions of PC gamers to lend their computers to scientists to study the cure for COVID-19

Renowned graphics card maker Nvidia recently called on PC gamers across the globe to lend scientists their computer resources, helping them research and learn about the SARS-CoV virus. -2 is spreading globally, thereby speeding up the development of the cure.

According to TechRadar, Nvidia's appeal was made to support Folding @ home - one of the largest distributed computing projects in the world.

Nvidia's call to PC gamers

Initiated by the prestigious Stanford University (USA) in 2001, Folding @ home is a project that uses technology to study the twisting and formation of protein forms, thereby finding cases of incorrect twisting. Their carcasses and related diseases, including cancer.

Typically, researchers will need a supercomputer to perform simulations and calculate the activity of proteins. However, the cost to buy and operate a supercomputer is huge. Therefore, Folding @ home decided to combine the power of many computers connected via the internet (also known as parallel processing) in the form of a distributed system. In other words, Folding @ home allows anyone who uses every computer to join this system to contribute to the research process of scientists.

FAH software interface created by scientists of Folding @ home project

Accordingly, if you own a high-configuration PC, you can download software called FAH by scientists from the Folding @ home project. The data segments will be broken down and sent via the Internet to the project participants' computers via this software,

After that, the data will be analyzed, processed on the user's computer and the results will be sent back to the database of Folding @ home. According to the Folding @ home statement, the more people participate, the more powerful computing power of this distributed network helps accelerate the process of learning and researching on SARS-CoV-2 virus.

In fact, this is not the first time Folding @ home called for help from the gaming community. In 2007, Sony offered to help Folding @ home by launching an integrated add-on for the PlayStation 3, allowing the project to borrow the power of the CELL processor found on this console model. According to calculations by Folding @ home, the system combines the power of 10,000 PS3 devices that can perform up to 1 million billion calculations in a second, on par with the speed of the most modern supercomputers more than a dozen years ago. .

The help of Sony and the PS3 gaming community ended on November 6, 2012. Over a period of more than 5 years, a total of 15 million PS3 gamers participated in the project, contributing 100 million hours of calculation to the Folding @ home project.