Folding@Home is extremely easy to set up, allowing you to donate extra CPU and GPU cycles to researchers fighting diseases, including COVID-19, from home. But there hasn't been an option for users to select COVID-19 researchers specifically as the recipient of their efforts. Now, Folding@Home has added the priority option in its latest software update.
Previously, there were five options in the web interface for which diseases you could help fight: any disease, Alzheimer's, Cancer, Huntington's and Parkinson's disease. The way to contribute to COVID-19 research was by selecting "Any disease" and hoping you'd get assigned work for your cause. Folding@Home assured users that most of the resources sent to "Any disease" would get put towards fighting COVID-19, but it left many users confused.
The software update also addresses a few other bugs. The dev team at Folding@Home noted that any bugs that would have delayed the software update have been postponed as to get a new version with the most important fixes out to the huge group of volunteers as quick as possible.
Folding@Home is a great way that you can help fight the coronavirus outbreak from home, and we're not alone in thinking so. Tons of volunteers have installed the protein-folding simulation program, contributing to the distributed computing platform. Thanks to the volunteers, the Folding@Home network has grown to be more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers in the world, tallying up to over 2.4 ExaFLOPS of compute power.
If you want to join the project, head here to download the installer and start folding.