Folding@Home - Turning Up the Speed!

Departments of Chemistry and of Structural Biology, Stanford University ^ | August 4, 2008 | Dr Vijay Pande

[texas booster]

With the 6.20 (classic & GPU) and 6.22 (SMP) clients out, we (Dr. Pande and the F@H team) can start looking forward to the next steps in client development. We still have some last bits of work to completely unify the clients, but the hard part is already completed there for the most part.

The 6.2x series introduces several new features for donors, but in time, the clients have been getting gradually more and more complex to use. The Win/SMP and multi-gpu setups are examples of very challenging setups. Our primary plans for the future are to make setup much easier, especially for the very challenging clients (Win/SMP, multi-gpu). Our dream client install would be a single installer that would install either the classic, SMP, or GPU client based on donor choices during the install process, and the installer would take care of complex install situations (such as multi-gpu).

It may take a while to get to a client installer like that. In the mean time, we are looking to improve our installation instructions to make the process easier with existing clients.

We have spent a lot of effort developing these new clients and putting all of our effort into getting them to run well (the GPU2 client/core has gotten a great deal of effort, which has paid off in the transition from GPU1 to GPU2). It's now time to concentrate on usability and ease of installation.

Our hope is that with this completed, we will have a very advanced set of clients, but with very easy installation. That's easier said than done, but that's where we're headed.

[texas booster]

Just for fun, I looked at the Top 500 Supercomputer list from June 2005.

http://www.top500.org/list/2005/06/100

A single high end GPU available at a retail store in the US costing between $200 and $400 can produce enough output to place 2nd on this June 2005 list of supercomputers.

The fastest at the time as the BlueGene/L at Lawrence Livermore clocking in at 136.80 Linpack GFlops. It has been upgraded since then and still retains the #2 spot. The single GPU also uses less power than the BlueGene/L.

We all know that there is no direct comparison possible or desired between the two cases. Just remember the following two points:

1. My comparison makes much more sense than virtually any Olympic judging in this years' Games, and ...

2. I am in Sales and Marketing.

So there, just for fun.

[anymouse]

Sorry, I gave at the office. ;)

[texas booster]

No prob.

Does that mean you won't be my ping next Valentines Day?

;’}

[texas booster]

The F@H stats servers have been hit with another power outage. A major outage seems to happen anout once a year.

From the blog:

Here's the update from Stanford

Power mostly restored to campus
Updated 3 p.m pacific time. - Power has been restored to the majority of the Stanford campus. All normal power is expected to be restored by 5 p.m. or sooner. A major outage occurred today at 11:30 a.m., affecting P G & E customers in Stanford, Menlo Park, Atherton and Palo Alto. If you are still experiencing difficulties on the Stanford campus, call 723-xxxx. At Stanford Hospital, dial xxx.

This one was a major disaster at Stanford and Palo Alto (and nearby cities), probably the biggest outage in a while. However, there seems to be some major Stanford power outage once a year, which is a major problem.

With this in mind, we have been distributing more of FAH to outside of Stanford (with servers at UCSF, Columbia, Cal State U Long Beach, and U. Pittsburgh). We hope to have a European site soon. Once those sites are a bit more established, we'll see about pushing an assignment server to a non-Stanford site and we should be much more safe to Stanford-related issues.

Also, it's good that we have servers in 4 different server rooms on campus. One stayed up the whole time, two came up fast, and the fourth (VSPGxx) is coming up now. Some servers will be slow to come up, so we expect this may take at least a few hours.

The stats update has been turned off until this gets sorted out. We hope to turn it back on later tonight, but it may have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Good old P G&E.

[astyanax]

Quick question? Can non-Freepers join the FR team?
I have a couple of individuals I work with that are interested, but I don’t want to bring politics into this (or work)...

[brityank]

The F@H stats servers have been hit with another power outage. A major outage seems to happen anout once a year.

Stats are still not up, so no one is getting updated yet.

With this in mind, we have been distributing more of FAH to outside of Stanford (with servers at UCSF, Columbia, Cal State U Long Beach, and U. Pittsburgh). We hope to have a European site soon. Once those sites are a bit more established, we'll see about pushing an assignment server to a non-Stanford site and we should be much more safe to Stanford-related issues.

I just caught this on VJ's Log, and noticed the above. Good move, maybe a fore-runner to them locating the farm out of CA due to power and regulation problems.

 

[texas booster]

Non FReepers can always join our team, 36120.

We have three truckers still folding, that started folding after a conversation with papasmurf a couple of years ago. He had over a dozen fellow truckers folding at one time, but most have not reinstalled folding when they got new laptops.

We also had a couple of DU’ers that signed up as bogus names “Bushisawarcriminal” etc. Let's just say that ... I did not know that “Monica Lewinsky” was a folder for them. (HA!)

Now, they can also join another team if Team Reagan upsets them, such as this team:



Still one of our favorite team names.

[brityank]

Hmmmmm ... ...
My kind of team!       ;^)

[texas booster]

Your first folding point are now posted:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=369959

Thank you for helping out!

[texas booster]

Your first folding point are now posted:

Karmal:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=369959

Nik Naym:

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=369713

Thank you for helping out!

[texas booster]

I haven't noticed any completed work units under your name for Team 36120.

I did see that you folded for Ars Technica a while back.

Hope that work hasn't interfered with the important stuff in life.

[astyanax]

Different astyanax. It was taken, as was Asytanax.
I signed up as astyanaxFR...
Set up one laptop on Monday (currently @ 102/125),
another laptop today (0/5,000).
Still looking for my spare hub so I can bring “the big guns” online.
Hopefully by Friday!

[AppyPappy]

I’m building a new box but it only has a 3200 IGP 256Meg graphics capability.

[astyanax]

I’m on a roll!
Asytanax = Astyanax
Monday = Tuesday.
...sigh...

[texas booster]

That VGA card isn’t suitable for folding work. It doesn’t have any shaders, which are very high speed units within a GPU to calculate shading and stuff in gams.

Try out the SMP folding here:

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/DownloadWinOther

Works great in Linux, and can be made to work in Windows. The new SMP version is supposed to be much more reliable.

[EasySt]

Congrats to andyk, who should pass the TWO MILLION points mark by early next week!

Free Republic Folders


With a little luck, perhaps I'll be there in four months or so...

Free Republic Folders

[texas booster]

This is the first time that I have seen the project over 3 PetaFLOPs. It may be due to all of the stats hiccups or the new NVidia clients may be kicking in.

Client statistics by OS

OS Type	Current TFLOPS*	Active CPUs	Total CPUs
Windows	199	209394	2137161
Mac OS X/PowerPC	7	8246	118873
Mac OS X/Intel	20	6384	59056
Linux	62	36336	326100
ATI GPU	354	3215	6331
NVIDIA GPU	1350	12273	18055
PLAYSTATION®3	1109	39332	583874
Total	3101	315180	3249450

Total number of non-Anonymous donators = 1056110

Last updated at Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:04:43

DB date 2008-08-20 06:00:02

Active CPUS are defined as those which have returned WUs within 50 days. Active GPUs are defined as those which have returned WUs within 10 days (due to the shorter deadlines on GPU WUs). Active PS3's are defined as those which have returned WUs within 15 days.

*TFLOPS is the actual teraflops from the software cores, not the peak values from CPU/GPU/PS3 specs. Please see our main FAQ, PS3 FAQ, NVIDIA GPU FAQ, or ATI GPU FAQ for more details on specific platforms.

 

[Free_in_Alabama]

I can add 2 XPS dual core with NVIDA GPUs Too bad Xbox isnt listed - the kids leave that on all the time also.

This is my bump to kick it this weekend.

[texas booster]

In most cases I think you get the most points (most science accomplished) by running the GPU software on each box, then adding a CPU console in a second folder to keep the other core active. Ping if you need help.

If XBox had the hardware then Dr Pande would have had the software knocked out in a month.

The stats above show that 583,874 PS3s have run or are running F@H currently.

That's what, maybe 3% of all PS3s?

What id 3% of all XBoxes could be running F@H?

Wow.

[texas booster]

Thanks for donating the PS3.

The unit will run 24/7 without heat damage, will crank out an amazing amount of points, and will slightly raise your power bill.

Worth it if we get a cure.