What is "folding"

Fold \Fold\ (f[=o]ld), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Folded; p. pr. & vb. n. Folding.] [OE. folden, falden, AS. fealdan; akin to OHG. faltan, faldan, G. falten, Icel. falda, Dan. folde, Sw. f[*a]lla, Goth. fal[thorn]an, cf. Gr. di-pla`sios twofold, Skr. pu[.t]a a fold. Cf. Fauteuil.]

1. To lap or lay in plaits or folds; to lay one part over another part of; to double; as, to fold cloth; to fold a letter.

   As a vesture shalt thou fold them up.
   --Heb. i. 1

2. 2. To double or lay together, as the arms or the hands; as, he folds his arms in despair.

3. To inclose within folds or plaitings; to envelop; to infold; to clasp; to embrace.

   A face folded in sorrow.
   --J. Webster.

   We will descend and fold him in our arms.
   --Shak.

4. To cover or wrap up; to conceal.

   Nor fold my fault in cleanly coined excuses.
   --Shak.

Folding \Fold"ing\, n.

1. The act of making a fold or folds; also, a fold; a doubling; a plication.

   The lower foldings of the vest.
   --Addison.

2. (Agric.) The keepig of sheep in inclosures on arable land, etc.

   Folding boat, a portable boat made by stretching canvas, etc., over jointed framework, used in campaigning, and by tourists, etc.
   --Ham. Nav. Encyc.

   Folding chair, a chair which may be shut up compactly for carriage or stowage; a camp chair.

   Folding door, one of two or more doors filling a single and hung upon hinges.

1. Designed to fold; ''as'' a folding bed, a folding bicycle, a folding chair, etc. n. 1 The action of folding; a fold. 2 The keeping of sheep in enclosures on arable land, etc. 3 (context computing programming English) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code%20folding: a source code display technique that can hide the contents of methods, classes, etc. for easier navigation. 4 (context geology English) the deformation of the Earth's crust in response to slow lateral compression. 5 (context slang English) Paper money, as opposed to coins. v

2. (present participle of fold English)

1. n. the process whereby a protein molecule assumes its intricate three-dimensional shape; "understanding protein folding is the next step in deciphering the genetic code" [syn: protein folding]

2. the act of folding; "he gave the napkins a double fold" [syn: fold]

adj. capable of being folded up and stored; "a foldaway bed" [syn: foldable, foldaway, folding(a)]

Fold or folding may refer to:

• Paper folding, the art of folding paper
• Book folding, in book production
• Skin fold, an area of skin that folds
• Fold (poker), in the game of poker, to discard one's hand and forfeit interest in the current pot
• Fold (album), the debut release by Australian rock band Epicure
• FOLD, the NASDAQ stock trading symbol for Amicus Therapeutics
• The fold in newspapers, used to demarcate content above the fold
• Sheep fold, a sheep pen in British English
• Folding bicycle, bicycle designed to fold into a compact form

In chemistry, folding is the process by which a molecule assumes its shape or conformation. The process can also be described as intramolecular self-assembly, a type of molecular self-assembly, where the molecule is directed to form a specific shape through noncovalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, hydrophobic forces, van der Waals forces, pi-pi interactions, and/or electrostatic effects.

The most active area of interest in the folding of molecules is the process of protein folding, which is the shape that is assumed by a specific sequence of amino acids in a protein. The shape of the folded protein can be used to understand its function and design drugs to influence the processes that it is involved in.

There is also a great deal of interest in the construction of artificial folding molecules or foldamers. They are studied as models of biological molecules and potential application to the development of new functional materials.

Folding is a transformation technique using in DSP architecture implementation for minimizing the number of functional blocks in synthesizing DSP architecture. Folding was first developed by Keshab K. Parhi and his students in 1992. Its concept is contrary to unfolding. Folding transforms an operation from a unit-time processing to N unit-times processing where N is called folding factor. Therefore, multiple same operations (less than N) used in original system could be replaced with a signal operation block in transformed system. Thus, in N unit-times, a functional block in transformed system could be reused to perform N operations in original system.

While the folding transformation reduces the number of functional units in the architecture, it needs more memory element to store the temporary data. The reason is that multiple data produced from an operation block needs to be distinguished from N data produced from original operations. Therefore, the number of register may be increased. Furthermore, it needs additional multiplexer for switching different operation paths. Hence, the number of switching elements would also be increased. To counterattack such issues, the considerations of folding is

• How to schedule multiple operations into an operation block.
• How to schedule the memory element for reducing the number of registers and multiplexers.