[H]ard team?

[auntjemima]

I am always seeing requests to join a [H]ard team for SOMETHING. What is it?

Let me know and I can do the required reading to get it going. I just need to be pointed in the direction.

 

[Deleted member 88227]

What hardware do you have to put towards the task? That will help us know where to direct you.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Primarily we are a bunch of enthusiasts running our system(s) to support a number of projects using our computer to do all kind of computations.

Two mainstream distributed eco-systems are where we are active:
Folding@Home (managed by Stanford University)
BOINC (Berkeley)

Folding@home has its primary focus on the computation of molecular dynamics and the change in the shape of proteins over time; often called "folding". If that folding / shape goes wrong it can cause diseases in the living organism. Drug development is then aimed to find a way to get the protein back in "good" shape or reduce the impact of the mis-shaped one. (Very rough). F@H prefers the use of GPU these days; CPUs can be used but many deem it as not worth it compared to the bragging points.

BOINC on the other side is a wrapper system and has various families of projects
- Biological / Environmental / Medical (e.g. Rosetta, GPUGrid, World Community Grid)
- Astro/Physics (e.g. Seti, astoroids@home)
- Mathematics (e.g. Primegrid)
- Misc (e.g. BURP; used for rendering)

(See here for a complete list of current projects: https://hardforum.com/threads/all-inclusive-dc-project-list-v-2.1895029/ )

Based on your preferences you can choose any of those areas (and in any combination).

Beside playing around with our hardware we also enjoy the friendly intra-team and even more the interteam competitions. E.g., FormulaBoinc or Pentathlon. Here the goal is to find a strategy for the team to beat the other teams. Mainly its about: which team can make the most points in a given time (again: very roughly).

So overall it can be quite fun, depend on your own goals (support science or "fight" for the team against other teams).

As Skillz mentioned: let us know what hardware you have at your disposal (and own and can decide to install 3rd party software on). If you plan to use hardware in your office please get approval before installation as some companies ban installation of similar software (like my company).

 

[atp1916]

I'm just here to wrek it ralph in these Sprints.

Maybe i'll help solve something along the way