NVIDIA Is Urging Gamers to Lend Their Unused GPU Power Toward Fighting Coronavirus

If you’re running a powerful GPU that isn’t seeing much use, NVIDIA is encouraging you to donate some of that performance to Stanford University’s Folding@home projects, which leverage GPU and CPU computing power from hardware around the world to fight and better understand various diseases.

That would include the dangerous pandemic that’s on everyone’s mind today, 2019 Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Researchers are hoping to better understand how COVID-19 interacts with human ACE2 receptors – the virus’s primary entry point – so they may find a way to block it by vaccine or other treatment.

PC Gamers, let’s put those GPUs to work.

Join us and our friends at @OfficialPCMR in supporting folding@home and donating unused GPU computing power to fight against COVID-19!

Learn more → https://t.co/EQE4u7xTZT pic.twitter.com/uO0ZCq8PEv

— NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) March 13, 2020

“By downloading Folding@Home, you can donate your unused computational resources to the Folding@home Consortium, where researchers working to advance our understanding of the structures of potential drug targets for 2019-nCoV that could aid in the design of new therapies,” wrote Greg Bowman, director of the project. “The data you help us generate will be quickly and openly disseminated as part of an open science collaboration of multiple laboratories around the world, giving researchers new tools that may unlock new opportunities for developing lifesaving drugs.”

Here are all of the Coronavirus GPU projects that are currently available through Folding@home. (CPU projects are still being developed.)

• 14530/14531 Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target
• 14328 – Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target
• 11741: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2.
• 11746: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2 (alternative structure to 11741).
• 11742: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease in complex with an inhibitor.
• 11743: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target.
• 11744: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.
• 11745: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain mutated to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.

In order to start folding, you will want to check the full requirements and then download the installer. Once the Folding@home program is up and running, simply select the project you wish to support and how much performance/power you wish to provide (light, medium, full) and when (working, or only when idle).