You may have heard of Folding @ home, the number-crunching app you can run on your computer to help researchers tackle certain medical problems, including the new coronavirus. In the past month, the network of volunteers who’ve installed it has become so vast, the platform is outperforming the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
According to the Folding @ home director, biochemist Greg Bowman, some 700,000 new Folding@home operators have joined up in recent weeks. That’s a huge increase over the 30,000 people who are typically running Folding @ home at any one time.