FR Folding@Home Project Update - Sony Playstation 3 Makes Its Debut!

Fox News Technology ^ | 03/23/2007 | LOU KESTEN, Associated Press Writer

[texas booster]

_INTO THE FOLD: Despite all the criticism the PlayStation 3 has received, everyone acknowledges it's a powerful piece of hardware. Scientists at Stanford University want to harness that power while you're not using it to play "Virtual Fighter."

The researchers are studying the folding and misfolding of proteins, processes that may lead to diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and many kinds of cancer. It requires a lot of computing power to simulate the processes, so the Folding@home program has set up a global network of computers to handle the calculations.

By the end of this month, Internet-connected PS3 owners will be able to donate time on their machines to the Folding@home project. It's the first "distributed computing" project to take advantage of the PS3's zippy Cell processor, and Sony promises it won't be the last.

[JosephW]

Have no fear, points are posting. It is just Extreme Overclocking that hasn't had updates (and I love how they break things out by the 3-hour segment).

Had me wondering for a while too.

[Drango]

> Extreme Overclocking that hasn't had updates

As you suggest, Stanford is still cranking out results and other sites are reporting them
http://fahstats.com/t.php?t=36120

[Egon]

My shameless self-promotion for this thread:

If you're interested in tracking your folding machine(s) over the web, please Freepmail me.

Available features include:

• Timely snapshot of each machine's progress on it's current project
• Point values for project
• Estimated completion dates/times
• Warning indicators for machines that appear to have stopped communicating or folding
• Warnings for machines that won't make their deadline
• Team ranking status box (courtesy of EOC)
• Machine stats like PPD (points per day)
• Project comparison stats: PPD, average time taken to completion, etc.
• It's free-- and always will be
• ...other features as time permits, and people request

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to script for the PS3.

[JosephW]

May be a shameless self-promotion, but it is a great tool.

I use it all them time and am probably responsible for any increase in spending for bandwidth that you have (well maybe Klutz gets that distinction). Highly recommend it to any and all freepers.

[Egon]

Thank you! Nice to know you guys are enjoying it!

[JosephW]

Have my machines are back to folding 212x WUs. I guess the deadline finally passed on those that the disreputable folders dumped.

May be a week or two before I make up the speed that those will cost me.

such is life.

[HKMk23]

...how many Wii's do I need?

I have it from highly reliable sources that one Wii is plenty; more than one is a recipe for misery.

[texas booster]

OS Type...........Current TFLOPS*....Active CPUs... Total CPUs

Windows.....................153..............160471...........1626988

Mac OS X/PowerPC......7...............8801...............95463

Mac OS X/Intel.............9................2880...............7452

Linux............................. 43..............25267............216117

GPU.............................. 43................733...............2228

PLAYSTATION®3.......697..............28441.............32064

Total..............................952............226593..........1980312


Not far from the magic petaFLOP barrier, at 4:40 am CST 3/25/07.

It is amazing that 32,000 PS3s are already crunching away. While the PS3 doesn't solve all of the calculations required to fold a protein, it does run the Implicit Water Molecule Solvents amazingly fast.

[Drango]

Do I understand this correctly?

Windows 1626988 produce 153 TFLOPS
PS3 32064 produce 697 TFLOPS

[texas booster]

This stat page compares system throughput and tries to match it up to the supercomputer standard of TFLOPS. It is a comparison that started years ago and is correct in terms of CPU cycles, but not necessarily in terms of effective work completed.

Think of it comparing AMD chips to Intel chips to Cell processors. It is really a marketing concept - all the new chips are really fast.

The last column is the number of systems that have been registered with F@H, at any time in the past. If you have upgraded your system then you have an orphan in that pile.

The middle column is the active CPUs reporting in the last 50 days (less for PS3s and GPUs). The current number is:

Windows .....................153.......160899
PLAYSTATION®3......726.........29618

Keep in mind that the PS3, because of its limited memory, can only fold certain molecules in specific ways. Because the Sony engineers have customized the folding to the strengths of the Cell processor the PS3 folds the molecules that it gets REALLY fast.

Also, the 160,000 Windows systems include everything from a few Windows 95 systems up to the newest bank-busting Quad core Intels. F@H needs the general purpose CPUs to do calculations of a different type than the PS3 or the GPU.

[texas booster]

http://fahstats.com/t.php?col=12&t=36120

Linky to a stats server that is still receiving F@H updates.

[LanPB01]

I've set my PS3 to run the program. How long does it take for Stanford to update their team pages? I'm not currently shown as being on team FreeRepublic.

[texas booster]

What is your folding name? Also make sure that your team is set to 36120.

It usually takes 8 - 12 hours to complete a work unit, than another 2 - 6 hours to scrub the work unit data and verify the results.

Uploads happen to the stats page every three hours. Look here:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_list.php?s=&a=2&t=36120

and here:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=36120

and here:

http://fahstats.com/t.php?t=36120

So far the only new user has been nerdwithamachine who posted his first WU earlier today.

[LanPB01]

My folding name is the same as my Freeper ID - LanPB01. My PS3 currently shows the running process should be done in about eight hours, and I've entered the proper team number.

Do you have any information on how safe it is to leave the PS3 running for long periods of time? It's my understanding it should be as safe as running a computer, but I haven't found any definitive source for the information.

[LanPB01]

Also, I have a question about Folding on my computer. I've downloaded the program and set it up, but now my ZoneAlarm program is hogging a lot of ram with the virus monitor and firewall. Are you aware of any program conflicts with Folding@Home?

[texas booster]

The PS3 draws about 180 watts when idle, and about 205 watts when folding. During testing for the F@H PS3 beta testers left some consoles on, running F@H, in a closed cabinet for months. No consoles died from overheating at all.

If your electricity is clean then you will have no problems.

There is a procedure to make sure F@H restarts when you restart the console. I'll find it and post it.

[texas booster]

As long as Zone Alarm allows F@H to access the Stanford servers occasionally then there is no conflict.

Check the processes under the Task Manager. F@H should hog 100% of the CPU cycles unless you set it lower. Zone Alarm should not use any cycles except when scanning.

[dfwddr]

egon, this page may be of interest to you, as well as anyone running the WinSMP client.
http://fahmon.fahinfo.org/WinSMP.html

[Egon]

egon, this page may be of interest to you, as well as anyone running the WinSMP client.

Hmm. It's becoming clear to me that I'm going to have to go back to using project numbers to index, instead of names.

Maybe when I rewrite the application on Rails-- which is coming up quickly.

[LanPB01]

Can you tell me how to adjust the CPU cycles?