In a recent blog, we explored HPC for the greater good and how we are supporting customers to get involved in the ‘Folding@home’ project in the fight against COVID-19. The project brings together personal computers, as well as those donated by larger companies and institutions from across the world and enables them to join together to run huge simulations to provide new opportunities for developing therapeutics and treatments for COVID-19.
Another university we are now assisting with this initiative is the University of Hull who is using its HPC service, Viper, to help researchers around the world better understand and tackle the pandemic. The University of Hull is donating spare capacity in its existing solution to the COVID-19 sequencing effort. Spare capacity can be utilised when users are not using all HPC resources and donations will not impact any current workloads that are being worked on.
Chris Collins, Research Systems Manager at the University of Hull told us: "Supercomputers like Viper are normally used to tackle the grand challenges of science and engineering on their own rather than as part of a distributed projects like this. However, COVID-19 has really brought computers like Viper to the forefront of the Folding@home project.”
“Using spare compute capacity on Viper – which is constantly supporting other research projects within the University – is us doing our bit to help tackle COVID-19. Viper is able to download and process bitesize chunks of huge computer simulations, and the final results can then be accessed by researchers across the world.”
The University’s HPC team is working hard to dedicate any resources not currently being used for University research to the project. Other OCF customers also joining the Folding@home effort include the University of Aberdeen, the University of East Anglia and Plymouth Marine Laboratory.
For more information or to get involved with the Folding@home project then please contact us here.