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Rex St. John
Apr 2020Armport

Fold for Covid

At Arm, I helped bring Rosetta@home and Folding@home to the Arm architecture during the COVID pandemic, in collaboration with the University of Washington, Packet, Neocortix, Linaro, 96Boards, and balena. Thousands of developers ran it on their Raspberry Pis, helping fold proteins to map the COVID spike protein.

Numbers

18
Developers in the task forceorganised across Arm, the partners and the volunteer effort
6,778
Machines contributingas shown on the project site
14
Rosetta@home team rankof all teams, at the time of the balena readout
718
Contributors on the team
85,914,327
Total credit

Problem

The Baker Lab at the University of Washington was searching for proteins that bind to the COVID-19 spike. Rosetta@home ran on x86 only.

A lot of idle machines are something else. Phones, single-board computers, Raspberry Pis, old laptops, Arm boards in drawers. The people holding them were not going to compile a client to join.

Solution

At Arm I helped bring Rosetta@home and Folding@home onto the architecture. I organised an 18-developer task force across seven organisations. The University of Washington's Rosetta team owned the science. Arm, Packet, Neocortix, Linaro, and 96Boards covered silicon and infrastructure. Balena handled delivery.

Setup came down to an image you flash with balenaEtcher. No toolchain, no build, no terminal. Thousands of developers ran it on Raspberry Pis and spare boards, folding proteins toward a map of the COVID spike.

Analysis

The port is the interesting half. The flashed image decided how many people finished. Every setup step we removed brought more contributors.

Eighteen developers, seven organisations, April 2020. No shared manager, no shared deadline, no budget line. The work was obvious and urgent, so it held. I would not count on that twice.

Result

6,778 machines contributing. Fold for Covid finished 14th of all Rosetta@home teams, on 718 contributors and 85,914,327 credit. Ahead of Team AnandTech, five places behind Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, twelve behind CERN. Most of that hardware had been sitting in a drawer.

Photos

  • The Fold for Covid site showing a world map covered in contributor pins and a counter reading 6,778 computers fighting COVID-19 around the world
    6,778 machines, most of them hardware that was otherwise sitting in a drawer.
  • The setup steps — download balenaEtcher and the image, flash it, start folding — above the partner logos including University of Washington, Rosetta@home, Arm, Packet, Neocortix, Linaro, 96Boards and balena
    Two steps and a flashed image. Every step removed is contributors gained.
  • The Rosetta@home top teams table with Fold for Covid circled at rank 14, showing 718 members and 85,914,327 total credit, sitting above Team AnandTech and below a team of 1,685 members
    The result that counts. Fold for Covid finished 14th of all Rosetta@home teams — above Team AnandTech, five places below Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, twelve below CERN.

Sources

SemiconductorsAI