 Both the Rosetta @ home application and the BOINC distributed computing platform are available for the Microsoft Windows , Linux and Macintosh platforms ( BOINC also runs on several other platforms , e.g. FreeBSD ) . Participation in Rosetta @ home requires a central processing unit ( CPU ) with a clock speed of at least 500 MHz , 200 megabytes of free disk space , 512 megabytes of physical memory , and Internet connectivity . As of July 20 , 2016 , the current version of the Rosetta Mini application is 3 @.@ 73 . The current recommended BOINC program version is 7 @.@ 6 @.@ 22 . Standard HTTP ( port 80 ) is used for communication between the user 's BOINC client and the Rosetta @ home servers at the University of Washington ; HTTPS ( port 443 ) is used during password exchange . Remote and local control of the BOINC client use port 31416 and port 1043 , which might need to be specifically unblocked if they are behind a firewall . Workunits containing data on individual proteins are distributed from servers located in the Baker lab at the University of Washington to volunteers ' computers , which then calculate a structure prediction for the assigned protein . To avoid duplicate structure predictions on a given protein , each workunit is initialized with a random number seed . This gives each prediction a unique trajectory of descent along the protein 's energy landscape . Protein structure predictions from Rosetta @ home are approximations of a global minimum in a given protein 's energy landscape . That global minimum represents the most energetically favorable conformation of the protein , i.e. its native state . 
