We are excited to announce the launch of our second project, FightAIDS@home in conjunction with the Scripps Research Institute, to help find new drugs to control AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.) You can read all about the project using the Research link on our web page. Our official launch date is Monday, November 21, 2005, but we wanted to have a little head start to iron out any last minute wrinkles prior to the press releases. Your agent will at random receive work units for the new project and for the Human Proteome Folding project as long as your machine meets the minimum system requirements for the given project. You can use your preferences to opt-in or out of any particular projects. Any preference changes take effect the next time your agent returns the result it is processing.

We set the minimum system requirements higher (250MB RAM and 550Mhz CPU) for the new project because of its considerably larger memory requirement. In addition, because the checkpointing intervals can be rather long on slow machines, this can lead to considerable delays in completing a work unit, especially when the machine is shut down regularly. Therefore, we have set the minimum CPU higher for this project as well. We will attempt to modify the research program to checkpoint more frequently and to use less memory. In that event, we may be able to lower the minimum system requirements. We are sorry for any frustration some members may have over this. In the meantime, you can still contribute to the Human Proteome Folding project and its monumental progress.

We plan to launch the Linux version of FightAIDS@home soon. Some finishing touches are required for that, which will take us a few more weeks. For future projects we hope to launch both versions simultaneously.