A distributed computing project called Folding@home has suddenly soared to the heights of the world's fastest supercomputer and beyond, as many join the fight to find a cure for Covid-19. It currently delivers 470 petaflops of numerical analysis performance.

Like other distributed computing projects, Folding@home harnesses the collective power of people and their individual PCs. However, when hundreds of thousands of people contribute, such a project suddenly becomes a major force to be reckoned with.

Greg Bowman, director of Folding@home, published an interesting statistic on Twitter. To put this 470 PFLOPs figure in perspective, it is more than double the peak performance of ORNL's Summit, the most powerful supercomputer in the world. In terms of sustained performance, Folding@home's current cumulative power is also higher than the seven fastest supercomputers in existence

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This can only be described as phenomenal. It is also a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic and the desire of people to provide CPU and GPU cycles in hopes of finding a cure or a drug treatment that might work for Covid-19.

Friendly competition also helps. Users can fold alone and anonymously, or they can join with others in teams to rack up points and earn substantial bragging rights. In fact, if you're interested in contributing, join PC Gamer's Folding@home team and help research a cure for Covid-19.

One word of advice: be careful where you download your Folding@home client; security researchers at ProofPoint have warned of a new phishing campaigns that attempt to take advantage of renewed interest in Folding@home to spread malware.

"The campaign email exploits the Folding@home brand, a distributed computing project for disease research, while simultaneously asking recipients to help find a cure for the coronavirus. The campaign primarily targeted the U.S. healthcare and manufacturing industries," ProofPoint said in a blog post.

Even if you don't fall for these scams, it's worth being aware in case you overhear a non-tech-savvy friend or family member talking about joining the fight: direct them to the Folding@home website and get them the official installer! .