A PC by itself is not as powerful as a supercomputer. Don't worry. Neither is my PC, nor anyone else's that I know of. But while no one has the computational resources to unlock the secrets of the virus alone, there is strength in numbers, and the Folding@home project, through the combined efforts of PC users around the world, has managed to analyze data 15 times faster than the world's best supercomputer, IBM's Summit successfully analyzing data

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Folding@home developers regularly post updates on Twitter, and according to the latest, the distributed computing project is currently running about 2.4 exaFLOPS of computing power.

This is a staggering amount of computing power; not only does Folding@home have the potential to run circles around the fastest supercomputer ever built, but at least in theoretical output, it could even surpass the sustained output of the top 500 supercomputers combined. It could even surpass it.

Folding@home started nearly 20 years ago. It was initiated by the Pande Institute at Stanford University as a means of understanding how proteins fold. This type of simulation is computationally demanding and will ultimately lead to a better understanding (and hopefully a cure or treatment) for diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.

Public participation in Folding@home has declined considerably over the past decade, especially after Sony stopped supporting the project on PlayStation 3 consoles in 2012. This was followed by a coronavirus outbreak.

In a Reddit AMA, Folding@home director Gregory Bowman said that earlier this year, about 30,000 people had joined the project; as of March 20, that number had ballooned to 400,000. It is not known how many are currently participating, but it would not be surprising if more than 500,000 people are currently contributing.

PC Gamer has its own Folding@home team, with sites competing against each other to collect the most points. It's a fun way to increase participation; if you want to join a team on PC Gamer, follow the instructions outlined in the forums.