Colossus, Cray and Blue Gene: The History of Supercomputers

PC Plus ^ | June 19, 2009 | Staff

[saundby]

The Apollo onboard computers were 15bit plus parity machines running at about 40,000 ops/Sec. They had about 38KB of core memory, about 2K of that writable, the rest was stored data and programs.

About the same as an HP-41CX. You could fit it into a watch, but I don’t know of any generally available watches with this sort of general purpose computing ability (if I did, I’d probably own one. ;) )

http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/

[texas booster]

To all who may be running the Folding@home SMP client:

6.24R3 windows SMP client released --Expiration July 4, 2010

We have posted the drop-in replacement binary for the windows v6 client. This can be found at:

http://www.stanford.edu/~kasson/folding ... 32-x86.exe
MD5 checksum: 5c14c566e11b69273477d7ca102c40c4

Refreshes of the full packages will follow.

This client has only minor modifications from the 6.23 client (it is near-identical to the 6.24 client currently released for Linux and OS/X). We are anticipating a major set of changes to the SMP client over the next several months, but we aren't quite there yet. Keep your eyes out for updates. (There are some big improvements to the SMP cores underway, and they will necessitate some new client code.)

As stated in the thread title, the 6.24R3 client will expire July 4, 2010. Assuming our new SMP cores are on schedule, you may wish to upgrade earlier, however, as we hope to phase out the SMP A1 core as we switch to the new future cores. But we'll release more details when the new software is released (date TBD--development is still ongoing).

Thanks for contributing to the project!

[GOPJ]

Interesting stuff - thanks for sharing.

[texas booster]

Current versions of F@H clients:

Windows Standard CPU systray and console - 6.23

Windows GPU clients - 6.23

Windows SMP - 5.92 but use 6.24

Linux combined client - 6.02 and 6.24beta

Mac universal clients - 6.24.1

Playstation 3 - 1.31

**************

GPU Drivers

ATI - Catalyst 9.6. see:

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/06/15/ati-catalyst-96-driver-everything-you-want-to-know/

nVidia - 186.18, see:

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10429

Multiple bug fixes and faster processing with the latest drivers.

[texas booster]

Please join the F@H group if you wish. It is quite addicting!

Love your tag line, and its a very good question. I think we know the reason, that the MSM agrees with his perverted actions.

[David Park]

Check out the SMP install guide here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1339662

It describes how to install SMP as a service on Vista. I’ve only done the console install, so I don’t know how hard the extra service steps are.

I agree that a relatively slow ATI card is more trouble than it’s worth, because it will steal CPU cycles better used for SMP folding. If you want a cheap video card for folding, look for the Nvidia 8800GS or 9600GSO (same card, different names). They should be available for about $50 and will do 3K to 4K PPD.

[David Park]

EasySt, that’s a really nice system you’ve put together. I’ve found the i7 920 can easily hit 3.5-3.6GHz on stock voltage (with a few tweaks), but you have to watch your core temps.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[GOPJ]

I'm glad you like my tag - here's my take on why the MSM is giving the lowlife monster a pass...

He tried to sell a 5 years old for rape parties BUT...

He's "gay"

and he probably has the right art on his walls

- works out in a gym

and drinks the "in" coffee.

For the lowlife, puffed up idiots in the MSM - New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, James Carville and Friends, Jesse Jackson etc. - that's enough to give him a pass on selling and raping a 5 year old black child.

Do you hear any of them objecting?

[texas booster]

Looking at buying an i7 for home, will probably run W7. This one will have an ATI 4850. It's a D*ll, but at $800 I will probably swallow my pride and get it.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0312598&BrCs=498&BrCg=16184665&BrRc=1100257753

Folding on the GPU is easy, but I have had problems with SMP under Vista 64. Prefer to run it as a service.

I am considering dropping in a much larger power supply and adding a second GPU (baby farm!). That drives the cost up and defeats the purpose of going cheap.

What is your recommendation for SMP under V64?

[texas booster]

I guess until they speak out against this crime and the “lifestyle” behind it, we can all say that they APPROVE of his actions.

There really are some crimes that require a death penalty.

[HangThemHigh]

Thanks and with the GPU and SMP running I was getting about 750 PPD. With just SMP, I was getting about 1100 PPD.

Hmmm, reading the site you posted, they say running as a service is not recommended, but they go ahead and give instructions. I will have to check, but that looks like what I had already (which they warn may not work).

[kalee]

ping

[colinhester]

A 9600GSO will really hit 3-4K ppd? WOW! Fifty bucks for the card and another $50 for a power supply (500W) and you got a decent folder. Hell of a deal considering I paid about $70 for my EVGA 9400GT not too long ago, and it only gets about 1k ppd. Thanks for the heads up.....C

[Ancient Drive]

what is the passkey?

[Onelifetogive]

6.24R3 windows SMP client released --Expiration July 4, 2010

I downloaded this and switched over from 6.23. My points dropped from 1500/day for this machine to 500/day...

Am I missing something?

[David Park]

I've only run SMP on XP. I tried and failed to set up Linux VMs to run SMP2 on Vista x64, but I never tried the normal SMP client. Hopefully the SMP2 client will be out soon for Windows. Linux already has SMP2, which is why people run VMs - SMP2 takes better advantage of the hardware, which means more points.

I'm participating in lots of other DC projects so I tend to only run GPU F@H clents and use the CPU for other stuff. The i7 is a great proc, but the stock heatsink is junk, worthless for overclocking.

That Dell system looks nice, but I read that the Dell BIOS doesn't allow overclocking. If you want to overclock and plan to upgrade the PSU, etc., you might want to look into building your own. It should be possible to build a nice i7 system for less than $1000 these days. I like to build my own so I get exactly what I want. I'm happy with my Dell XPS laptop, though.

[David Park]

Yeah, that’s the problem with folding on ATI cards, they typically need one core of the CPU while folding. If the ATI card generates less points than the CPU core does, then you’re better off only running SMP (or upgrading to a faster video card :-).

[texas booster]

http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-passkey

It is not really implemented, but is designed to keep others from changing your user ID, say in a university setting.

Just leave it blank.

[texas booster]

The Dell uses a locked chip, so the only speed changes are Bclk and one other.

I don't really overclock much anymore, unless it is really simple. No time for fun.

I think that I'll keep to GPU and consoles until SMP is cleaned up in Win7.