Ilustraviz Joins the Fight Against the Coronavirus

In Light of the Global Pandemic with Coronavirus

Ilustraviz is contributing all its GPUs and CPUs to the fight against the Coronavirus.

Thanks to this generous ongoing donation, the noble 3D rendering and modeling company.

Is helping us get that much closer to understanding how COVID-19 works as well as a vaccine. Let’s take a look at how this is possible.

Folding Proteins to Find a Cure

A tried and true method to researching diseases is to simulate protein folding as well as potential drug design.

In doing so, scientists can better understand how a disease behaves, and use this information to develop medicines, vaccines, or even a cure for it.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few atoms in a protein and simulating all of those interactions takes quite a lot of computational power, as well as time.

To shorten this lengthy duration, Stanford University

Started a distributed computing system back in 2000.

The project, known as Folding@Home, utilizes unused GPU and CPU resources. From linked up computers around the world to conduct disease research.

Although this project is mainly focused on disease simulation.

Such as cancer and Parkinson’s, the project is expanding to include the Coronavirus as well.

According to Greg Bowman, Director at Folding@Home, “Viruses also have proteins that they use to suppress our immune systems and reproduce themselves.

To help tackle coronavirus, we want to understand how these viral proteins work. And how we can design therapeutics to stop them.”

Who Can Help?

There are loads of ways for people to help fight the Coronavirus.

For example, the top three easiest ways to contribute is by washing your hands often, staying at home, and social distancing.

That said, Ilustraviz wanted to do more than just these common methods.

Which is why they took action by donating all its GPUs and CPUs to Folding@Home.

See, although all added computational power is very much appreciated, not all devices are capable of handling such a procedure. As a result, there are only a select few that are capable of contributing to the global computational project.

Taking this into Consideration

Taking this into consideration, the Ilustraviz team got to work installing Folding@Home onto the company’s 3D render machines, since these devices achieve major technological feats on a regular basis.

Thanks to the team’s efforts, Ilustraviz was able to effortlessly compute. The visually and computationally demanding tasks we need to fight against the Coronavirus.

To see if you are able to contribute as well, download Folding@Home here.

From there, install the software and launch the program. Devices that are equipped with a high-end graphics card, processor, and ram may be able to run Coronavirus simulations. To do so, simply click “I support research fighting…” and choose COVID-19.

Bear in mind, you may need to add your GPU, or Graphic Processing Unit, to the FAHControl panel.

Although this may sound difficult, users simply need to click the FAHControl button, hit Configure, and check the box that said “GPU”.

Once this is all set up, users can start folding!

That said, if you notice your device starts getting sluggish you may want to select the option to run “only when idle”.

In addition, new simulations are being generated at this time. To meet volunteer demand after Nvidia’s request for assistance boosted Folding@Home contributions.

As a result, some downtime may be experienced between folds.

Nevertheless, thanks to Ilustraviz and other valiant contributors we were able to cycle through a bunch of protein folding and potential drug designs in a short amount of time. If we keep this speed up, our fight against the Coronavirus may end sooner, rather than later.

Stay safe out there!