Q Associates joins the fight to find COVID-19 vaccine

June 25, 2020

UK-based IT Solutions and Services Specialist, Q Associates, has re-assigned computing power from its datacentre to support Folding@home, a distributed global computing project which asks users to donate computing power to support research around Covid-19.

In the fight to defeat coronavirus, Q Associates’ IT resources have been running Covid-19 research calculations since March 2020 , supporting the work of many researchers and scientists to advance understanding and treatment of the disease.

Since the first report of coronavirus (Covid-19), major IT companies such as Intel, Nvidia, VMware, AWS and IBM have stepped up, not only by harnessing their ability to provide tech to rapidly solve problems, but also coming together to donate computing power to Folding@Home, one of the world’s largest distributed computing projects aimed at helping scientists develop new therapeutics to a variety of diseases – including Covid-19.

Every day, this global pandemic asks a great deal from all of us and
Q Associates staff are working to support our customers throughout the crisis. However, whilst remaining fully operational, Q Associates are also in a position to provide dedicated computing resource within our datacentre to support the Folding@home project. This primarily includes NetApp HCI technology, enterprise-scale hyper converged infrastructure, designed to run multiple applications with predictable, industry-leading performance capabilities.

“We have highly efficient computing resource within our datacentre, so it makes sense to contribute to global efforts to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic and other diseases”
said Andrew Griffiths, Director at Q Associates.

‘The way Folding@Home works is to take computing resources from across the world and combine the processing power to help run research simulations at scale. Q Associates is currently listed within the top 2% of contributors globally and we are delighted to be supporting this amazing project”.

Through the global network of donated compute power in the Folding@home programme, a huge technology resource has been created to fold proteins, a scientific task that could prove instrumental in the fight against coronavirus. The speed these systems can run calculations and model situations provides scientists and researchers with critical insight, and technology is the enabler to make the process faster.

Folding@home is currently based at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, USA, with over 100,000 “folders” taking part globally. Their goal is to reach 1Million participants. Across the UK, many universities and research councils are also working to support the project and accelerate the search for treatment.

The research network that Folding@home manages has arguably become the world’s most powerful supercomputer. At the start of April 2020, collective performance power had reached a massive 2.4 Exaflops – faster than the top 500 supercomputers combined! Even before it broke the Exaflop barrier, researchers were posting eye-popping work in a variety of diseases.

As an award-winning independent provider of specialist IT services,
Q Associates provides data-centric technology solutions to customers across the UK and beyond.

Working with the world’s most exciting and innovative technology providers, we design, deliver and support our customers’ critical IT service platforms, across desktops, data centres and clouds.

We are proud of the work that we do and would love to discuss your strategic IT priorities and challenges in this rapidly changing landscape.

If you would value an independent, specialist view, please give us a call on 01635 248181 or email solutions@qassociates.co.uk

For further information or to participate in the Folding@Home programme, please visit https://foldingathome.org/