DU's Folding @ Home Project - STATUS UPDATE 2

[iconoclastNYC]

Folding@Home is a project run by Standford university that uses your computers idle processing cycles to research cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and cancer.

Democratic Underground has a team on the Folding@Home project. To learn how you can help with our project please see this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=299849&mesg_id=299849

To learn about our team progress continue reading.

Here's the latest report:




Metric 1: CPU Growth.

Since I started keeping stats on Jan 17 we have added 136 CPUS to our team. That's great news! Unfortunately the Freepers added an amazing 246 additional CPUs to their project in this time.

One freeper said he added 90 CPUs to their team so the majority of these their new additions may be people installing it on lab computers. Eventually they'll run out of labs to add it to. Thing to remember is that they are much farther along in building their team than we are. Hopefully they'll hit their ceiling soon in terms of installed CPUs and we will keep growing.

The first thing we need to do close the gap on CPU parity...right now we have 35.6% of the CPUs as the Freepers do.

As the CPU graph shows we have not gained on the Freepers in terms of CPUs.



Metric 2: Score Growth

Our team score is 23.3% of the Freepers right now. This is an 3.5 points over the January 27th gap. Real progress! This despite the fact that the Freepers have a lot more CPUs on us.

Suggestions I have to take this project to the next level.

1. Our own PHP-based stats site, updated every 3 hours like the OCP site but only listing DU vs. Freepers. Like these graphs i'm doing in Excel but updated immediately.

2. DU Folding @ Home Frequently Asked Questions

3. DU Folding @ Home e-mailing mailing list to facilitate #4

4. Coordinated posting schedule to keep threads kicked and on the greatest page

5. Lobby to get a article (not thread) posted on the home page. Maybe we can write an article about the history of the Folding @ home project and highlight quotes from DU members who are contributing to it. This would be huge exposure for the project. Article should probably downplay the freeper competition.

6. Register a special DU Folding@Home screen name to post on the official threads on

7. Folding@Home avatar

8. Pick sever milestone goals and try to push news of reaching the goals on the DU Blog (threads that are on the home page)

9. We should have a goal that there are no negative posts on the threads that we don't help resolve. Negative posts will stop people from contributing. With this is mind I think we should solicit for volunteers who will help with tech support for DUers who try to join the project but have technical difficulties.

Something that we should get out to everyone is that if they are having problems with crashing it's probably most likely do to poor cooling, and the easiest solution is to throttle down the Folding client to only 80% of CPU. A better solution is to install a more efficient/better fitting/bigger CPU heat sink or more case exhaust fans. We may want to approach people who have posted problems on the board before and help them resolve their issues. We can touch on this on the FAQ.

Please let me know what you think about my suggestions.