Communications of the ACM
New Stanford Software Takes Folding@home's Biological Research to Supercomputers
Stanford chemistry professor Vijay Pande's group recently used Folding@home simulations to investigate new therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer's disease.
Credit: L.A. Cicero
Stanford University researchers have developed Copernicus, a distributed framework for supercomputers that is based on Folding@home, a distributed computing project also developed at Stanford that borrows computing time from home computers to simulate how proteins take shape.
"We're bringing Folding@home to supercomputers," says Stanford researcher Vijay Pande.
Copernicus enables other researchers to run simulations, including molecular models, using processor time on multiple supercomputers or computing clusters, instead of on home computers. "It opens the door to huge crowds of people using these methods, which have matured with Folding@home," Pande says.
Copernicus uses the fast communication available between supercomputers, combined with statistical sampling methods, to run parallel simulations within or between supercomputers, in a process known as strong scaling. "This method should be able to use any supercomputer on the planet completely," Pande says.
From Stanford Report (CA)
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