Noah Johnson: Folding Proteins at Home

Apple Computer ^ | 3/30/2004 | By Barbara Gibson

[aruanan]

Okay, I'm folding now.

[Swordmaker]

Well, well, yeah....sure it's easy for a Mac! They only have FIVE percent of the market! HA!

Of course, that is the BEST 5% of the market...

[texas booster]

I like Anandtech, but decided to start the Free Republic Folders team. Lets see if my $15 daily cost of electricity will contribute to something decent.

Pinging Jim and/or Admin - FReepmail me if you have any objections to starting this team, or if you want administrator rights to the team.

[texas booster]

Oh yeah, it is group 36120 in Folding@Home.

[Dustoff45]

Don't waste what little cpu cycles you have using an 8 mhz cpu. Even with a Pentium pro current assignments might take 3-4 weeks to complete, and by then the work is no longer timely.

[Woahhs]

You Mac guys are all the same. You think just because you like your Macs more than PC users like PCs that makes them better.

Well I have stats to PROVE people should like PCs better!

[antiRepublicrat]

Here's another - single-chip AMD and Intel systems smoking dual G5's for lunch.

I thought about that and there is one possible reason. The PPC 970/G5 is compatible with the G4, but software written for the G4 may not perform much better on an equally-clocked G5 because the G5's architecture is vastly different than the G4's, especially in the scheduler (which in the G5 gets to juggle 215 in-flight instructions, details of which are even more complicated). To take advantage of the G5, you need to recompile with gcc tweaked for the G5's architecture. And that isn't even very good -- people are showing up to 20% speed increases over gcc by using IBM's PPC 970 compiler.

If you're into the I2, you'll understand how important an optimized compiler is for such complex high-end chips, and the PPC 970 is just the little brother of IBM's POWER4. Actually, even Pentiums do very well with Intel's compiler over gcc, but I believe the right compiler makes even more of a difference with the PPC 970.

[general_re]

Oh, I don't doubt it. The G5 is a creditable chip, but like most new CPUs any more, it leans very heavily on the compiler to do a lot of the thinking for it. If I had to characterize the relative performance, I'd say that it's basically neck-and-neck right now. If IBM and Apple can bring the clock speeds of G5 up into the 3+ GHz range, single-CPU G5 boxes will be a very competitive offering in terms of both price and performance, and dual 3+ Ghz G5s will be ahead of most of the rest of the pack.

[antiRepublicrat]

If I had to characterize the relative performance, I'd say that it's basically neck-and-neck right now.

I'd say the G5 is behind now. They've been sitting at 2 GHz for a while, and Intel has added 400 MHz. Meanwhile, AMD is beating Intel.

If IBM and Apple can bring the clock speeds of G5 up into the 3+ GHz range, single-CPU G5 boxes will be a very competitive offering in terms of both price and performance,

3 GHz is expected this fall, and unlike in the Motorola days it is not a pipe dream. The G5 XServes are already running the new 90nm PPC 970FX chips, allowing them to run much cooler than the desktops at the same speed. Expect their clocks to be ramped up for desktops soon.

Given that the iLamp (um, iMac) is actually pretty competitive with price to a comparable PC, a G5 in it would definitely help a lot. But I just see a single G5 system as a waste, since they're built for MP. I guess the marketing droids will decide that one.

BTW, rumour has them going to dual-core G5s next year, which makes sense since they took out one of the POWER4's cores in making the PPC 970 in the first place.

[SunkenCiv]

Ping!

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, why didn't you tell me we were all the same? Did you expect me to think of that myself? Geez.

;')

[Coleus]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/t-health/browse

[SunkenCiv]

Fat Women Not As Smart, Swedish Doctors Claim
UK Sun | 11/23/04
Posted on 11/23/2004 8:30:05 AM PST by gopwinsin04
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1286730/posts?page=32#32

[restornu]

Happy New Years

there this end take on the word FOLDING I have no clue how it started or why....

This one is called Folding Protein At Home???

whatever

but I thought of you Nully a Mac User

[null and void]

No can do. Too close to my current profession, it's possible conflict of interest. I'll stick to looking for space aliens...