Folding@Together

Folding@Together is an alternative way to contribute computing power towards protein folding simulations like Folding@Home, a vital tool for researchers in the search for potential cures to Covid-19.

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What is Folding@Together

Folding@Together is an effort to lower the barrier to entry for contributing to the Folding@Home network of protein folding simulation solvers. These solvers are an important tool in the arsenal of researchers searching for cures to diseases like Cancer, Ebola, and Covid-19. Contributing directly to the project is simple and free, requiring downloading of software which makes use of unused compute cycles to run folding simulations. However, for many the prospect of downloading and running software from the internet is a scary one. Compound this with the idea of running technical software in the background that one doesn’t understand and it becomes clear why adoption is tricky.

Folding@Together allows donors to contribute to the project without downloading software by accepting cash microdonations which are used to spin up virtual machines on the cloud to run Folding@Home software. These donations are pinned back to the individual donor allowing us to send a transparency report detailing how the cash donation was applied to simulation solving.

How it works

How Folding@Together is built

Folding@Together is built on the AWS cloud and makes use of technologies like Python, Django, Kubernetes, and Lambda State Functions. We isolate individual donations via one-to-one mapping against Cloudformation Stacks configured to run Folding@Home solvers. The diagram below details a birds-eye view of this architecture.

Architecture

The project is completely open source (MIT License) and we welcome any and all contributions

Folding@Together In The Future

While we accomplished more than I thought possible for the short period we had, there’s still a ton we can improve/refurbish, including:

  • Creating a backing 501c(3) organization for F@T to further incentivize donations by making them tax deductible.
  • Making node scheduling against the current credit balance a more intelligent process
  • Providing more information to potential donors on the project and its goals.
  • Expanding beyond just Folding@Home to other solver networks like Rosetta@Home
  • Optimizing node scheduling by adopting a cross-cloud approach
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