Distributed Computing, COE 453

3585118
Department of Computer Engineering, KNUST
Dr. Eliel Keelson
Assignment Due:13th March,2022
Explanation of Folding at home:
Proteins are large biomolecular and micro molecules that compromises one or more long chains
of amino acids residue.
Protein dynamics are highly complex phenomenon comprising numerous contributions from
motions with different mechanisms of actions and happening with diverse timescales and
amplitudes that highly depends on the system and local environment,
Folding at home is a distributed computing project aimed to help scientists develop new
theuraptics for a variety of diseases by the means of simulating protein dynamics. It uses the
gpu or cpu to crunch numbers to improve the understanding of biology and treatment.
In other words, Folding at home is a distributed computing effort that uses small clients to run
simulations for biomedical research when users' PCs are idle.
An initial sets of atoms formed and calculated, it is then integrated with Newton’s law
equation(F=mass*acceleration) , it then updates the particles and repeat the process again.
Folding at home uses series of work units which are sent through clients through the internet to
the assignment server and wok server. It then runs multiple work units until it runs a whole

Characteristics of Distributed Computing:

• Resource Sharing
• Openness
• Concurrency
• Scalability
• Transparency
• Fault Tolerance

Resource Sharing:
Folding at home uses protein dynamics to study the behavior of simulations. As the protein
increase in size, it’ll require other computing cpus to operate.
Scalability:
The application software doesn’t change when the scale or demand increases
Concurrency:
A hyperthreading processor can run efficiently without interfering into each other

3.
Telecommunication network
Multi-player video games
Network application

References
Vijay Pande, Description of Folding at Home, Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home
Linus Sebastian, Explanation of Folding T home, Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU4qOebhkfs
Dr. Sukrit Singh, What happens to the Computer when running Folding at home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N0cZgcVFRE&list=TLPQMTIwMzIwMjIvXXM7Zb63A
g&index=1
Explanation of proteins, Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein
Andy Patrizio,Explanation of Folding at home ,
https://www.networkworld.com/article/3587388/foldinghome-exascale-supercomputer-finds-
potential-targets-for-covid-19-cure.html