Coronavir research is a global priority today. The Folding @ home project offers researchers to use the power of foreign computers around the world to speed up finding a cure for coronavirus. In the Czech Republic, at least 39 teams from 15 academic institutions are currently involved in the project. Individual teams are awarded points according to the performance provided. The FIT CTU team currently provides the largest performance from teams of Czech academic institutions worth almost 100 million points per day, which corresponds to the computing power of approximately 1,000 ordinary computers. The faculty thus accounts for almost 90% of the performance within the entire CTU and is currently ranked 258th out of 253,000 teams worldwide.
FIT CTU has reserved for the project a part of the computing capacity, suitable for this type of calculations, from the ClusterFIT and CloudFIT platforms. "FIT CTU has a modern technological background that works efficiently and economically. Therefore, it is not a problem to provide currently unused power for a good cause. Even if the machines are running at full capacity, the financial demands are not much greater than under normal operation, "explains Ing. Martin Vaňko, head of the ICT department of FIT CTU. "We have provided the Folding @ home project with world-class performance, thanks to which the FIT CTU team has already achieved 1 billion points. Our faculty has reached the top of the rankings despite the fact that the increase to the current performance took place only 14 days ago, "adds Vaňko.
FIT ČVUT students are also involved in the project, who have prepared a comparison website https://folding.fit.cvut.cz with an overview of the results of Czech academic institutions. "We wanted to support healthy competition and increase the credo of the good thing, which is this unique project that can save thousands of lives," says student Jiří Vrba, one of the creators of the comparison website.