Why doesn't the Verge have a folding@home team?

Posted by TiO2 on October 7, 2012 04:46 pm 5

I'm starting to fold again on my desktop, and I'm just wondering: why doesn't the Verge have a folding@home team? Anandtech has one, Engadget has one, MaximumPC has one, etc., but we don't.

For people that don't know what folding@home is:

http://folding.stanford.edu

You're basically donating your unused spare computing power for medical research (specifically protein folding simulations, which takes a ton of power). Since it runs off your unused spare power it shouldn't make your normal tasks slower. E.g. if you're using only 30% of your CPU on a normal day, folding@home will use the other 70%. If suddenly you need 80% CPU (for video rendering or whatever), F@H will automatically scale back its own usage to 20%.

General advice if you want to start:

-You'll be running your CPU at 100% all the time. This will lead to increased power consumption, heat, noise, and possibly shorter computer lifespan. All for a good cause though. And if you live in a colder region, that additional heat might actually be a good thing.
-Because of the above, don't fold on a laptop.

-If you have multiple cores consider the SMPS client. The last time I checked (though things probably have changed), it supports true 4-core CPUs; if you have a dual core, run two instances of the single-core client instead.
-You can also fold on your GPU; it's actually a lot faster than on your CPU.