List of Folding@home cores
The distributed-computing project Folding@home uses scientific computer programs, referred to as "cores" or "fahcores", to perform calculations. Folding@home's cores are based on modified and optimized versions of molecular simulation programs for calculation, including TINKER, GROMACS, AMBER, CPMD, SHARPEN, ProtoMol and Desmond. These variants are each given an arbitrary identifier (Core xx). While the same core can be used by various versions of the client, separating the core from the client enables the scientific methods to be updated automatically as needed without a client update. Active cores. These cores listed below are currently used by  the project. GPU. Cores for the Graphics Processing Unit use the graphics chip of modern video cards to do molecular dynamics. The GPU Gromacs core is not a true port of Gromacs, but rather key elements from Gromacs were taken and enhanced for GPU capabilities. GPU3. These are the third generation GPU cores, and are based on OpenMM, Pande Group's own open library for molecular simulation. Although based on the GPU2 code, this adds stability and new capabilities. Inactive cores. These cores are not currently used by the project, as they are either retired due to becoming obsolete, or  are not yet ready for general release. TINKER. TINKER is a computer software application for molecular dynamics simulation with a complete and general package for molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics, with some special features for biopolymers. CPMD. Short for Car–Parrinello Molecular Dynamics, this core performs ab-initio quantum mechanical molecular dynamics. Unlike classical molecular dynamics calculations which use a force field approach, CPMD includes the motion of electrons in the calculations of energy, forces and motion. Quantum chemical calculations have the possibility to yield a very reliable potential energy surface, and can naturally incorporate multi-body interactions. Desmond. The  software for this core was developed at D. E. Shaw Research. Desmond performs high-speed molecular dynamics simulations of biological systems on conventional computer clusters. The code uses novel parallel algorithms and numerical techniques to achieve high performance on platforms containing a large number of processors, but may also be executed on a single computer. Desmond and its source code are available without cost for non-commercial use by universities and other not-for-profit research institutions. AMBER. Short for Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement, AMBER is a family of force fields for molecular dynamics, as well as the  name for the software package that simulates these force fields. AMBER was originally developed by Peter Kollman at the University of California, San Francisco, and is currently maintained by professors at various universities. The double-precision AMBER core is not currently optimized with SSE nor SSE2, but AMBER is significantly faster than Tinker cores and adds some functionality which cannot be performed using Gromacs cores. ProtoMol. ProtoMol is an object-oriented, component based, framework for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. ProtoMol offers high flexibility, easy extendibility and maintenance, and high performance demands, including parallelization. In 2009, the Pande Group was  working on a complementary new technique called Normal Mode Langevin Dynamics which had the possibility to greatly speed simulations while maintaining the same accuracy. GPU. GPU2. These are the second generation GPU cores. Unlike the retired GPU1 cores, these variants are for ATI CAL-enabled 2xxx/3xxx or later series and NVIDIA CUDA-enabled NVIDIA 8xxx or later series GPUs. GPU3. These are the third generation GPU cores, and are based on OpenMM, Pande Group's own open library for molecular simulation. Although based on the GPU2 code, this adds stability and new capabilities.