PARIJS– (BUSINESS WIRE) – ESI Group, een wereldspeler in virtuele prototyping-software en -diensten voor industriële bedrijven, sluit zich aan bij het Folding@Home-project in de Verenigde Staten en stelt de rekenkracht van haar servers beschikbaar om het onderzoek naar de preventie en behandeling van COVID19.

Folding@Home (FaH), 20 jaar geleden gelanceerd aan de Stanford University, is een gedistribueerd computerproject voor het uitvoeren van moleculaire dynamica-simulaties van eiwitdynamica. De aanvankelijke focus lag op het vouwen van eiwitten, maar is verschoven naar meer biomedische problemen, zoals de ziekte van Alzheimer, kanker, COVID-19 en ebola.

ESI Group Participates to the Fight against COVID-19 with Folding@Home

PARIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)– ESI Group, a world player in virtual prototyping software and services for industrials, is joining Folding@Home project in the United States, making the computing power of its servers available to accelerate research on the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

Launched 20 years ago at Stanford University, Folding@Home (FaH) is a distributed computing project for performing molecular dynamics simulations of protein dynamics. Its initial focus was on protein folding but has shifted to more biomedical problems, such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, COVID-19, and Ebola.

Folding@Home uses computer simulation to predict the dynamics of diseases like COVID-19 and understand the proteins’ moving parts thanks to 3D modeling. Watching how the atoms in a protein related to the virus move relative to one another is important because it captures valuable information that is inaccessible by any other means.

This project runs on the unused computing power of computers, phones and formerly PS3s from thousands of thousands of volunteers, both individuals and corporates.

ESI Group joined in March 2020 the fight to defeat COVID-19, combining their high-performance CPU and Graphics computing power with the Folding@Home network which is now pushing out an impressive 470 PetaFLOPS of raw compute power. Contributing to this project has provided an amazing look at the power of collaboration since the Folding@Home overall computational power now dwarfs the IBM SUMMIT supercomputer, considered as the fastest in the world, capable of 200 petaFLOPS, i.e. 1.88 billion calculations per second.

Taking the experimental structures as starting points, scientists and engineers can simulate how all the atoms in the protein move, effectively filling in the rest of the game that experiments miss. This can reveal new opportunities – new ways to render the virus ineffective and powerless against human immune systems.

One solution can be used to increase and accelerate simulations: multiply the computing power by using thousands of computers around the world. ESI Group is actively involved in this dynamic.

Folding@Home reports that it has seen a 1,200% increase in contributors, with Bitcoin miners also joining the fight, and over 400,000 new volunteers joining over the last two weeks. James Hartley, North America IT Manager underlines: “We have truly embodied the values within ESI’s culture of passion, social responsibility and energy to bring this initiative to fruition, working together with our team in France to realign and support the efforts”.

About ESI Group

Founded in 1973, ESI Group is a leading innovator in Virtual Prototyping solutions and a global enabler of industrial transformation. Thanks to the company’s unique know-how in the physics of materials, it has developed and refined, over the last 45 years, advanced simulation capabilities. Having identified gaps in the traditional approach to Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), ESI has introduced a holistic methodology centered on industrial productivity and product performance throughout its entire lifecycle, i.e. Product Performance Lifecycle™, from engineering to manufacturing and in operation.

Present in more than 40 countries, and in major industrial sectors, ESI employs 1200 high level specialists. In 2019, its turnover was 146M€. ESI is headquartered in France and is listed on compartment B of Euronext Paris.

For further information, go to www.esi-group.com.

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Contacts

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