Telefónica is lending processing capacity from 107 servers to help with research to find new COVID-19 therapeutic treatments.
The Folding@home research initiative, based at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, is a distributed computing project for simulating protein dynamics, including the process of protein folding and the movements of proteins implicated in a variety of diseases. It brings together citizen scientists who volunteer to run simulations of protein dynamics on their personal computers.
Insights from this data are helping scientists to identify new opportunities for developing therapies.
Supercomputer
Telefónica will donate processing resources from its subsidiaries in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom and Uruguay. It says the 107 high-performance servers offer the processing capacity of 3,552 CPUs.
The project is also open to individuals who want to contribute their personal computer resources. All the distributed resources added together aim to create a “supercomputer” that helps process faster computer simulation.
Enrique Blanco, Chief Technology & Information Officer, Telefónica, said, “Throughout our almost century-old history, Telefónica has experienced crisis situations at different times and in different countries. And we know that in times of crisis, communication networks and tools are even more crucial than usual. Therefore, we are very happy to join the Folding@home project and offer our technological resources and know-how to support their research to tackle COVID-19”.