[John @ Oct 31st 2007 11:51PM]

could someone detail exactly what the advances made are? While I'm sure folding@home has managed some impressive stuff, I haven't seen any data about what the system has accomplished

[frozenrubber @ Nov 1st 2007 12:12AM]

Well, the main question to me is if the cost of running Folding@Home would be better spent my focused organizations/academic institutions.

Using rough calculations of .106 kwH rate (final cost w/ distribution) here in NJ and the PS3 using 200W while folding, that puts the cost at ~.02 an hour and a total of $15.26 of electricity a month.

Is Folding worth $15 a month/$183 a year compared a similar sized contribution to a an effective medical organization (some are much better than others)?

[Mat @ Nov 1st 2007 12:20AM]

Frozenrubber:

Thats is a great question and i had never considered that. I'd be interested to know too

[Max Fun @ Nov 1st 2007 5:20AM]

As a biologist, I won't actually trust a computer model of anything, until it has been verified with more empirical means. I also haven't seen any citations using data from the project, but then I'm not a biochemist or structural biologist.

[Paul @ Nov 1st 2007 8:58AM]

@John - Folding at home reports are available on their website where they list all the projects they are working on and how the results turned out

@Frozenrubber - You bring up the cost of running the programs by mentioning the price of electricity, what you are forgetting is that these academic institutions are not the ones running the programs, but instead it is your computer during its idle time (I have mine set up to run when my desktop is idle). The only cost to these academic institutions is a small group they have to maintain the program and the scientists that create the programs and process the data. These same projects would previously be done on dedicated supercomputers which do not have the same processing power as 670,000 desktops / PS3's working together and have a much, much higher purchase and maintenance cost.

[James @ Nov 1st 2007 4:54PM]

@Frozenrubber: don't forget, the new 65nm chips cut the power consumption by almost a half -- the quoted figures are 125W instead of 200W. Your point still stands, though: would ~$100/yr donated to a research foundation do more to advance the cause than a year's worth of CPU cycles? I can't really answer that...