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Folding@home - The PS3 and Post-PetaFLOP
Folding@home: The Science ^ | 09/18/2007 | PandeGroup

Posted on 10/04/2007 9:20:01 AM PDT by texas booster

The PandeGroup has all been very excited about the great turnout of FAH donors over the last few weeks, allowing FAH to go over a petaflop. The PS3's have been cranking out some very useful scientific results due to the new scientific software present in v1.2. The PS3's are so fast, we've been looking at the results sometimes 2x to 3x a day (instead of a couple times a month). If all goes well, we're hoping to write up these results soon (maybe a few weeks) for peer reviewed publication.

It's also interesting to think about what we want to do post-petaflop. One idea we have is to make the calculation even more accurate. With the methods we have in mind, this normally would slow us down quite a bit (say 10x slowdown), but on the PS3, it's likely that we may get a lot of that for free, as the memory access is the challenging part and in many ways with that now addressed, we may get more flops for free.

This really changes how we think of the economy of doing these calculations and is pushing us to more and more accurate models. One upshot for FAH is that this would drive the PS3's GFLOP rate (now typically 35 GFLOPS on a new GB WU) even higher, closer to the peak. Since the peak is something like 200 for the Cell, we still have a lot of room to possibly grow (although it's unclear how close one can get to the theoretical peak -- my guess is that 70 to 90 per PS3 may be the max for us). Nevertheless, even 70-90 would mean FAH would start getting close to 2 Petaflops!

-- Vijay Pande


TOPICS: Health/Medicine; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: alzheimers; fah; fh; folding; proteins
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To: texas booster; dfwddr

I deleted everything and reinstalled. I’m on the road again. Thanks!


61 posted on 11/10/2007 4:22:22 PM PST by Clara Lou (Thompson '08)
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To: texas booster; Clara Lou; All

Hi TB, Clara, and all =

Seems that F@H changed their URL to http://folding.stanford.edu/ — but both are giving the same “Fehler 403 ist aufgetreten :-( Filename: /kunden/usr/local/apache/share/cgi-bin/error403.1.html” error. Anyone have a contact for them?


62 posted on 11/10/2007 7:37:42 PM PST by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: texas booster; Clara Lou; All

Oh; that error comes up from the ‘Forum’ link, all else seems to work OK.


63 posted on 11/10/2007 7:51:07 PM PST by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: texas booster

Just racked up WU #400 and will be passing the 80K point mark in the next 48hrs.

Office machine will be replaced with dual 2.33G Xeon ZPro box very soon.


64 posted on 11/13/2007 9:06:36 AM PST by HKMk23 (Nine out of ten orcs attacking Rohan were Saruman's Uruk-hai, not Sauron's! So, why invade Mordor?)
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To: XeniaSt; texas booster; Clara Lou; All
On opening http://www.folding-community.org

I got this message

Fehler 403 ist aufgetreten :-( Filename:
/kunden/usr/local/apache/share/cgi-bin/error403.1.html

Seems that the Forum is kaput for now; found the following on the Wiki at Google Groups F@H Wiki ^:

I sent Stamford an email over the weekend to their Security Group at the Computer Center -- no response yet.

Still folding ... ...

65 posted on 11/13/2007 4:35:08 PM PST by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: brityank

Thanks for looking out for the group and looking into this. Now that I travel again, time is harder to come by to FReep.

Something called sleep keeps nagging for attention.


66 posted on 11/13/2007 7:22:26 PM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: HKMk23

I just lost my main folding system and decided to buy a clearance system at a decent discount, rather than wait until Black Friday and buy one then.

Got a decent Core 2 Duo with lots of RAM, but the power supply is too small to support my ATI graphics card. One more thing to spend money on next month.

F@H has also announced updated clients that will be introduced soon. No word on nVidia however; still waiting on nVidia to clean up their drivers.


67 posted on 11/13/2007 7:26:15 PM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster; XeniaSt; Clara Lou; All
Got to pay the electric bill, right!         ;^)

Finally, they have the following posted in the "News" section at F@H:

As many FAH donors have seen, the Folding Community Forum (FCF) has been down for several days. This is a major problem for us as this is how we interact with donors. WW, the maintainer of the forum, has been working with his hosting company to get a solution, but it's going slowly. In parallel, we have been looking into other options, including hosting a forum at Stanford as a temporary or permanent fix for this issue. We'll keep you posted as we learn more.

In general, this blog is the place to go for information on any of this. One benefit of it being hosted in a separate site is that if either Stanford and/or the FCF go down, it will still be up. If all three somehow go down, we may have bigger problems to deal with!

I hope to have more information about this soon. It's important to stress that the forum is a third party contribution to FAH and FAH works completely independent of it (the forum being down doesn't mean that FAH is down -- quite to the contrary).

It is a great repository of valid info for some of the niggling little problems I had getting started, so I hope they get it stable again.

Folding ... folding ... folding ...

68 posted on 11/13/2007 7:51:28 PM PST by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: texas booster

Too bad about your system, but getting updated hardware is always fun.

In the power department, I highly recommend PC Power and Cooling (http://www.pcpower.com/home/).

I’ve had good experiences with their stuff, and my brother has built numerous systems using their power supplies.

This September, PC Power & Cooling upped their warranty periods. Their Silencer product line was warranted for 3 years; it’s now warranted for 5, and their Turbo-Cool line — formerly warranted for 5 years — now has an eyebrow-raising 7 year warranty.


69 posted on 11/13/2007 11:40:15 PM PST by HKMk23 (Nine out of ten orcs attacking Rohan were Saruman's Uruk-hai, not Sauron's! So, why invade Mordor?)
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To: HKMk23

How much bandwidth is needed for folding? I’m at the end of the line for DSL.


70 posted on 11/13/2007 11:53:42 PM PST by ThomasThomas (An investigative journalist is one who uses spellcheck.)
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To: ThomasThomas
You will need very little bandwidth for folding. Even dial-up would suffice.
71 posted on 11/14/2007 3:45:22 AM PST by EasySt (Life is precious. Live it well...)
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To: ThomasThomas; EasySt
Most of my that are systems are folding away are older systems not on DSL. As long as you get on the internet every week or so then you will be fine.

I am about 23,000’ from the CO, and the baby bells would barely install IDSL. In the old days I could get 144k up and down. I ended up switching to an aerial system.

On a related note, we would love to have you join our folding team. We have seen a 50% increase in team folding in just over 3 months, and now rank #52 in the world out of ?? teams.

You can even fold on your PS3!

72 posted on 11/14/2007 5:30:33 AM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: ThomasThomas

Your ‘net connection is only utilized to download Work Units, upload completed work, and occasioanlly get a different “core” executable. These are EXE files in the 1.6-2.3MB size range and are the actual engines that process work unit data. Work Units arrive compressed, which helps data transfer when downloading.

Even at the ragged limits of DSL, I’d have no worries about the demands imposed by Folding@Home.

Welcome aboard.


73 posted on 11/14/2007 3:43:39 PM PST by HKMk23 (Nine out of ten orcs attacking Rohan were Saruman's Uruk-hai, not Sauron's! So, why invade Mordor?)
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To: texas booster; XeniaSt; Clara Lou; All

Just a quick note to tell you all that the Forum is back up, as of around 02:00 this morning. They aren’t sure if it was a hacker or a problem with the underlying phpBB software vulnerability.

Fold on ...


74 posted on 11/14/2007 8:31:34 PM PST by brityank (The more I learn about the Constitution, the more I realise this Government is UNconstitutional !!)
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To: brityank

BUMP!


75 posted on 11/17/2007 2:16:54 PM PST by Publius6961 (MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)
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To: texas booster; All
Right now there is a new, Limited Edition 40GB PS3 out that uses a new 65nm process chip instead of the old 90nm process. (This means it runs cooler and uses less power.)

On the specifications sheet for my 60GB PS3, the max power consumption is indicated as 380 watts. On the new 40GB Limited edition unit, it’s shown as 280 watts. In actual folding, the two systems reportedly consume approximately 200 watts on the 60BG unit and 140 watts on the new Limited edition 40GB unit. (Your mileage may vary...)

The Limited edition 40GB model is selling for $100 less than the 60GB version and $200 less than the 80GB version. They all fold at the same speed.

I noted a couple other differences in the 40GB Limited Edition unit, compared to the 60GB model. The 40GB Limited Edition model has only two USB ports, instead of 4. It also lacks the PS2 compatibility chip. (This chip is missing in the 80GB model, as well...) It also doesn’t have the Memory Stick, SD Card and CF Slots that are included in the 60GB version. Except for these differences, everything else seems to be the same.

Oh, the 40GB Limited Edition also comes with a Spiderman 3 BlueRay Movie disk in the box, and includes an offer for 5 other BlueRay movies free by mail.

Happy Folding!

76 posted on 11/18/2007 3:32:00 AM PST by EasySt (Life is precious. Live it well...)
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To: texas booster
Do you know if there is any effort to port
the SMP Mac code to 64 bit Unix for Leopard OS X 10.5 ?

There should be a significant boost in folding.


77 posted on 11/20/2007 10:41:35 AM PST by Uri’el-2012 (you shall know that I, YHvH, your Savior, and your Redeemer, am the Elohim of Ya'aqob. Isaiah 60:16)
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To: texas booster

New thread here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1929553/posts


78 posted on 11/28/2007 7:42:46 AM PST by walkerk
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To: walkerk

Thanks for ping forward.

Its been a long week already.


79 posted on 11/28/2007 10:17:56 AM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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