COVID-19 is a pandemic that endangers everyone in the world. There is something specific that gamers can help in the fight.

My audiences are mainly StarCraft 2 players, so you are very likely a PC gamer with a decent GPU and CPU on your computer. PC gamers can contribute to the fight against COVID-19 by running mathematical operations on their PCs. You donate your unused GPU and CPU computing power to fight against COVID-19. All you have to do is install a small program on your computer and it downloads a small amount of data that it analyses, then returning the results to the Stanford researchers.

This is done through the Folding@Home project of Stanford University. Folding@Home is a distributed computing project for disease research that simulates protein folding, computational drug design, and other types of molecular dynamics. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Folding@Home is taking on the fight to assist researchers around the world against the virus.

You can join the fight by downloading the Folding@Home software. If you need more information on how to run it, you can refer to this.

Here is the FAQ.

How do I choose to help with the COVID-19 related projects ?

To help in the fight against COVID-19, you need to select

– Webcontrol : “Any disease” in the list “I support research fighting”

– Advanced Control/FAHControl : Configure > Advanced, select “Any” in the list “Cause Preference”

The COVID-19 related projects are on top priority and will be assigned automatically.

Can I choose to work only on the COVID-19 related projects ?

No, you can’t.

In FoldingHome, you never choose to work on only one project (or family of projects). The setting described above is a preference, but if no work is available to match your preferences, the system is designed to send you what need to be done at the time of your work request.

Is my system able to help ?

There are WU available for both GPUs and CPUs. Folding@Home supports nVidia and AMD GPUs through OpenCL on Windows and Linux.

The CPUs are supported on Windows, Linux and MacOS.

My GPU is supported, but it not detected.

You need to update your drivers with the latest ones downloaded from nVidia or AMD website.

Windows Updates often breaks OpenCL support when it updates the drivers automatically. To fix it, reinstall the drivers you downloaded from nVidia or AMD website.

On Linux, in addition to the proprietary drivers from the GPU maker, you may have to manually install “opencl-icd” matching with the drivers you installed.

Can you add an option to the list of causes to specifically support COVID-19 ?

No the categories are currently hard coded. We are now in the end of the development of a new client.

How do I know that I’m working on COVID-19 related projects ?

If you’re running a project that’s listed here, you’re fighting COVID-19 :

CPU : 14328 – 14329 – 14530 – 14531

GPU : 11741 to 11764

I avoid posting any StarCraft unrelated post, but this is important. I am going to make the best out of this platform to “target” people who have good GPU and CPU. Please share this with your gaming pals.

Take care, everyone.