How to use your Hauptwerk computer to help with Coronavirus

[mdyde]

(Small print: I'm posting this in a personal capacity -- please don't contact Milan Digital Audio for support or advice as a result of this, and please only use this if you feel you have a sufficient level of computer/technically experience -- it's moderately technical -- thanks. I also have no relationship with the Folding@Home project.)

Since lots of Hauptwerk users have powerful computers that spend plenty of time idle when not being played, and since the Coronavirus pandemic is something that's likely to be a big issue for many Hauptwerk users around the world, if you have a PC or Mac that's connected to the Internet then you might perhaps consider running Folding@Home on it when Hauptwerk isn't running, so that the computer's spare processing power can be used to help scientists in the quest to develop drugs for Coronavirus/COVID-19.

This article give a quick overview, and has simple instructions for how to run it on a macOS (but the process is the same on Windows, except of course that the FAHControl application is accessed via the Windows Start Menu, instead of the macOS /Applications folder):

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-yo ... ronavirus/

Folding@home ( https://foldingathome.org/ ) is a distributed computing project for disease research that simulates protein folding, computational drug design, and other types of molecular dynamics.

In addition to cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's, Folding@home has announced that it is tackling a disease that has been dominating the headlines: COVID-19.

The project is joining researchers around the world who are working to better understand the Coronavirus to accelerate the open science effort to develop new life-saving therapies.

By downloading Folding@Home on your Mac, you can donate your unused computational resources to the Folding@home Consortium, where researchers are working to advance our understanding of the structures of potential drug targets for COVID-19 that could aid in the design of new therapies.

Help us in the fight against COVID-19! Download the app at: https://foldingathome.org/start-folding/

Notes:

- Folding@Home can only be used if your computer has a permanent Internet connection.

- Please see the article ( https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-yo ... ronavirus/ ) for the detailed instructions.

- Please make sure that you *pause* then exit Folding@Home (FAHControl) whenever actually using Hauptwerk, to avoid risk of audio glitches in Hauptwerk. (Once you've launched FAHControl, unless you specifically pause it first, it will keep running in the background, even if you exit FAHControl. Hence once it's running you specifically need to pause it before exiting.)

I've been running FAHControl on both my Mac and Windows 10 computers for the past few days whenever I'm not using Hauptwerk.

[micdev]

Good morning Martin,

Very interesting; I will connect my older HW4 computer and another spare computer that I have gathering dust (it is a backup computer for my organ rentals). A few years ago I had a computer who was used for SETI@HOME, use to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)... so far nothing was find. Funny project but no real short term uses for us human

On the other hand, Folding@Home can be very useful for the coming months!

Thanks for the info.

Just want to add that they have a linux client (FAHClient) and an optional graphic interface (FAHConsole). Obviously, this is not for your Hauptwerk computer. FAHClient has to be run as root (or with sudo); FAHConsole as a user.

Thank you for promoting the link - a very good use of excess computing power.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to play my home organ lately due to the extreme busyness that my job has become (medical doctor). There was I hoping to buy up and install all my remaining dream sample sets before the end of March if my v4 license stops me adding any more - don't expect that to be happening any time soon now.

Deep sympathies to those facing far greater problems or sadness ahead due to the pandemic.

Interesting FYI:

When the fine folks at Folding@Home put out a call for enthusiasts with spare computing cycles to help fight coronavirus, the internet answered. As of this writing, the Folding@Home distributed network has broken 470 petaFLOPS. That’s more than twice as fast as the Summit supercomputer, and it’s got the director of the project seeing stars.

If enough people joined the Folding@Home project to fight coronavirus, we could collectively propel the system over the one exaFLOP barrier. I don’t think that triggers the $2,000 payment in Horst Simon’s bet and it wouldn’t exactly count on the TOP500 — but it’d be a titanic demonstration of computing horsepower and one for the record books.

Here’s how FAH describes their work on SARS-CoV-2, for those of you who aren’t familiar with their work already:

Our specialty is in using computer simulations to understand proteins’ moving parts. Watching how the atoms in a protein move relative to one another is important because it captures valuable information that is inaccessible by any other means. Taking the experimental structures as starting points, we can simulate how all the atoms in the protein move.

The reason simulation is important is that there are limits to our ability to watch events like this happen in real-time. The goal of the F@H project as it relates to coronavirus, specifically, is to “look for alternative conformations and hidden pockets within the most promising drug targets, which can only be seen in simulation and not in static X-ray structures.”

Work like this goes hand-in-hand with the recent Summit supercomputer work isolating 77 chemical compounds that could bind to the virus and lessen its ability to bind to human cells, if not block it altogether. Developing new treatment options is critical right now. Researchers have said that a vaccine is 12-18 months away, best-case. Treatments that made the virus less effective in the already-infected won’t help us keep people from getting sick, but they could save a tremendous number of lives if the infection continues to spread.

There’s no guarantee that these protein-folding simulations will lead to an effective treatment or medication, but contributing your spare computing cycles is one of the only practical ways to help with the coronavirus outbreak for the average person. Unless you are a trained medical worker or working in a job that’s been deemed essential, the best thing people can do is stay at home as much as possible.

Rgds,
Ed