PS3 Client for Folding@Home Debuts, ATI GPU Version Soon 177
eliot1785 writes "Stanford's Folding@Home project is reporting that Sony debuted a Folding@Home client for the PlayStation 3 today in Germany. Researchers hope to use the power of the PS3's Cell processor to greatly expand the number of FLOPS of which their network is capable. F@H also announced today that they will release a client capable of running on ATI graphics processors. With these two new developments, F@H hopes to raise the total power of their distributed computing network to 1-10 petaflops. At the upper end of that target, the network would be faster than any current supercomputer, at least in terms of FLOPS."
Reader TommyBear points out a collection of papers showing scientific advances made by the F@H researchers.
Hehe, PS3 cures cancer.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hehe, PS3 cures cancer.. (Score:5, Funny)
All kidding aside... if you had a PS3 would you run this in down time?
Re: (Score:2)
Yees, I Will (Score:2)
I'm running folding@home at 2 PCs that runs all night (using electric power at night is more cheap than during the daytime). And it's installed on other 3 PCs, so when I'm only browsing the Internet or so, it uses the unused processor.
So if I buy a PS3, or a Cell personal computer, I'm sure that it is going to run folding@home.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some provinces/states use what they call a "smart meter" to charge for electricity. Those meters not only record how much electricity you used, but when you used it. They can then charge more for using power during peak hours (11am to 5pm) than for using the same amount of power during off-peak hours (10pm to 7am). That is an attempt to encourage people to use less po
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Around here (Toronto) there's talk of using nuclear power to pump lakewater uphill at night, then reverse the flow during the day to recapture the energy and covert to electricity. Seems smart to me.
Economy 7 (Score:2)
Differential pricing for peak and off peak electricity is fairly common here in the UK. It is called Economy 7 [wikipedia.org] because we get 7 hours of cheaper electricity overnight. I pay 8.77p/KWh in the day but only 3.6p/KWh at night. Most installations of this type use the off peak electricity to heat up night storage heaters [wikipedia.org] and hot water tanks.
Night storage heaters are particularly crap because you have to know in advance what the weather will do. If you turn it off overnight and the weather is cold the next d
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That $800 price tag starting to pay for itself already!
Feeling Bad About Curing Cancer (Score:3, Interesting)
There was an article a while back about game console power consumption, but rather than dig that up, I'll assume a PS3 will average 200 Watts while cranking away on proteins. It's a good, round number. And I'll assume that I'd spend an hour per day actually playing games. Electricity in my area costs about $0.08/kW-hr.
0.2 kW * 23 hr/day * 365 day/year = 1679 kW-hours/year
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have too much sympathy for you, you intentionally ignored the fact that everyone who has folding@home installed has explicitly explicitly done so by choice. In most configurations, it doesn't run when the computer is being used, but only when its screensaver is active. So yes, your post whining about programs "sucking up your idle cycles" seems to be pretty much just FUD that is unrelated to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And I'll probably run folding@home for the hell of it too.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Mmm...chicken.
--Jimmy
Diebold (Score:5, Funny)
Give Me! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a friend who is a very senior engineer at NVidia who has talked about how sick and tired they are of having the boat anchor that is x86 tied to their hardware. And that they would love to just cut out Intel and just run Windows/Linux right on their hardware. Microsoft obviously felt the same way when they dumped Intel and switch to PowerPC with the 360.
The PS3 is supposed to completely support keyboard and mouse, have a full version of Linux sitting on the harddrive, and support homebrew development. If you can download and install normal Linux apps...a graphics programmer dream come true. Even cooler are the plans of Sony coming out with higher end PS3 models with more RAM or Cell chips. A Linux box with a couple gigs of RAM and dual or quad Cells, oh baby.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Give Me! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Homebrew support? doubt it. (Score:2)
in fact i'll bet you one of the coprocessors on the cell is just like microsoft's custom xbox360 processor, with on-die signing and encryption keys.
Yeah, it'll run linux.. a "signed" distribution of linux which will be the only thing ps3 will run.
why do you think Sony announced it rather than the folding@home coordinators at stanford?
Sony probably only offered the signature because the project submitted everything and assured sony
Re: (Score:2)
As far as I know the main restriction with the PS2 kit was access to the DVD drive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Longer answer: you are a attention whore
logest answer: please read around a bit, and know what the fuck you are takling about, becasuse right now you dont.
Re:Give Me! (Score:5, Insightful)
1) a video card does not contain a general purpose processor and is not capable of running an operating system. It contains a GPU, which is very fast for certain subsets of mathematical calculations, but that is all. It can't effectively branch, doesn't offer memory protection, etc. There are the biggest parts of a modern general-purpose CPU
2) Video cards are not tied to x86: A video card communicates with a bus like PCI or AGP. The system could be running an PowerPC chip, or a cell chip, or an x86 chip. nVidia has cards that run on all three of these environments.
3) You talk about the cell processor and the PS3, but that doesn't have anything to do with x86 being left behind. The cell processors are a massively parallel processor designed for running video games and computational problems. It will probably be inefficient (per watt and per cycle) to run a normal desktop OS on it. Not that it isn't possible, but that isn't what it is for.
4) You point out how x86 must be bad because Microsoft switched to PowerPC for the 360. So why did Apple switch to x86 from PowerPC, and suddenly everything is faster and lower power?
Re: (Score:2)
You know, I was kind of wondering about that. The current crop of GPUs is now considered Turing complete. So doesn't that mean that someone could theoretically write and
Answers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Give Me! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to see the kind of "Linux" you'll get on the PS3, look no further than the "Linux" they gave us on the PS2.
-Eric
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
-Eric
Re: (Score:2)
I know the Intel or AMD duo-poly has huge impact on personal computing but it is not the case here.
For example a monster CPU named Power6 will ship in months which will have max speed of 5.7 Ghz. If you remember it is a RISC CPU , you can imagine the huge power. The problem is, it is not cheap, not suitable for home computing and needs very advanced coders.
So sad
Re: (Score:2)
GPU folding seems more interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
what about nuclear weapons?! (Score:2)
sarcasm here, please...
Re: (Score:2)
If anyone has seen any PS2 "supercomputers" running at their university, or read any reports of soldiers discovering stockpiles of missile-guidance-system-controlling PS2's in Iraq, please let me know.
-Eric
Re: (Score:2)
WHEN YOU HAVEN'T GOT ANY FREAKING MISSILES, now would it?
Re: (Score:2)
-Eric
100+ Million PS3s - Staggering To Think About (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Its _extremely_ brain-swelled as a cpu (i.e. many execution units, relatively sucky bandwidth and latency).
And if even a small number of those 100 million playstations will be added to the computation pool and thus needlessly be running 24/7 instead when games are played then you are going to need a few more powerplants just for them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Memory on PS3 makes it state of the art. It is some maniacal configuration RDRAM (yes, Rambus) configuration which doesn't exist except some custom workstations.
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz
Main RAM -- 25.6GB/s
http://www.rambus.com/us/products/xdr_xdr2/ [rambus.com]
This is the memory archi making cell suck? Also your 100 million playstations running folding@home needing to build powerplants really shows some troll signs.
Yes, people choose to run folding@home, a VALID STANFORD PROJECT
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
been there (Score:2)
Gee, that's much better (and completely different) than when Saddam was supposedly using playstation 2's [theregister.co.uk] to test nuclear weapons. This isn't a planted story by Sony *at all*.
Re:been there (Score:5, Insightful)
I found out yesterday that someone I knew last year died of liver cancer over the summer. She was 19. I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of people out there who don't give a flying fuck if Sony gets good press about this. If it brings us a cure to cancer a year, a day, an hour sooner, it's a damn fine thing. I just hope most PS3 owners find out about it, and maybe we can cure cancer. If a company makes an extra million or two in the process, good for them.
Re: (Score:2)
-Eric
Re: (Score:2)
Wii? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A cure for cancer lost! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh well.
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Ahhh... (Score:2)
Only about 150 still in effect now.
Wait till you see what's next
.
I think it would be cool (Score:2)
Can't run it on PPC or PPC64 Linux machines (Score:2)
How nearsighted of them ;) No support for PPC64 at all? I even tried building Wine [winehq.org] on an 8-way POWER5 machine [uni-augsburg.de] to run the Windows 32-bit binary under, and that didn't work either.
So how about it? When will we see a PPC/PPC64 Linux binary of Folding@Home? Where is the source, Luke? I'll build it myself!
Folding@home community please don't submit to /. (Score:2)
You see the result as half of the posters say PS3 has a bad performance and other half says folding@home, a scientific project is sort of "fake" thing.
Please don't "share" any folding@home news with this user profile from now on.
As folding@home is a scientific computation , if people get wrong impression from these "know everything" geeks they will simply delete folding@home. That _is_
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Ohhhh!!! Makes me sooooo mad!!!! Someone mod me up!!!
Oh wait, they don't...
Uh huh (Score:2)
Re:This makes less sense than ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.distributed.net/ [distributed.net] was doing it long befor seti@home
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
i still laugh that distributed.net managed to get to the end of the keyspace for rc5-64 then realized they had the correct key 6 months prior, but no one noticed
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Tax credits? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, it would probably be too expensive for the IRS to implement, unless the administrative overhead involved with tracking, verifying, etc can be shunted off onto someone else (F@H).
Re:This makes less sense than ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This makes less sense than ever! (Score:5, Funny)
I HATE SILLY LOOPS
Re: (Score:2)
Even if we assume that most people know about the extra power cost and are willing to pay that, is it an efficient use of the money in terms of getting results? Would it be better if people donated the money instead?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Put another way, is it cheaper to identif
Re: (Score:2)
My point, however, wasn't to compare costs of running existing processors to buying new ones, it was to say that the money might be better spent on other areas of cancer research (i.e. other than Folding@Home). If I'm going to give $300 (in either power or monetary donation) to cancer research, I'd want it to go to the best avenue of research - and I have no idea if this is 'Folding@Home' or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
I use nuclear-power electricity
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Full disclosure: I work on both of those projects.
Re: (Score:2)
Be seeing you...
Re:This makes less sense than ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
However, don't think you're not paying anything for it in the winter. Electric heating is much more expensive, and much less effecient than burning gas/oil/wood/etc. And, running something with a switching power supply is much less effecient than using a fully-resistive electric heater of the same power.
AND if you are using electric to heat your home
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Where, exactly, is the wasted energy going?
Re: (Score:2)
Up the power distribution system, actually. That requires power companies to maintain HUGE banks of capacitors.
If you're interested, do a bit of research on Power Factor.
While a fully-resistive load like an traditional lightbulb and an electric heater will have a PF of 1.0 (~100%), cheap switching power supplies are as low as PF 0.4 (~40%).
Switching PSUs in computers are usually closer to 0.6, though the very effecient with active Power-Factor-Correction (
Re: (Score:2)
You've heard of conservation of energy, I'm sure (I hope). Here's a new one: Conservation of Money.
Anything that requires power companies to spend more money is going to be reflected by higher (flat) power-rates for YOU. The money for massive power factor correction facilities isn't going to come from the sky, and commercial power companies aren't going to take that money out of their own profits.
Besides, even though home users don't p
Re:This makes less sense than ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
For my apartment I pay a single amount for everything, the space, water, gas, electricity, sewer, trash, etc.
So when I am running 20,000 BTU's of cooling power between two separate AC's, 6 PC's on 24/7 (4 of which do Seti@home) and take 20 minute showers... I come out pretty good and considering the person who had the place before me didn't have their rent raised in the 10 years they were there.
Of course... all of this
this sort of muddled thinking is the problem (Score:2)
Tell me, do you set US foreign policy?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm just asking.
Re: (Score:2)
Cry about the environment all you want, please though be sure to do it when it is relevant... which means not in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you limit yourself based on such trivialities you'll always live under a tree as there is always a risk associated with anything you do, let's not forget about the migratory animal patters that have been interrupted by your wood and stone house!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
-Eric
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire planet opposed us for a reason, or rather, many reasons. Even the countries that "supported" us, did so against the wishes of the majority of their respective populations, and only to win our favor.
Just look at the disaster we've created in Iraq. All we've done is destroy infrastructure, further damaging the quality of life of Iraqis, and even worse,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I actually debated that phrase a bit before submitting it, but it turns out that (according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer#The_fa s test_supercomputers_today [wikipedia.org]) a supercomputer completed 2 months ago (the MDGRAPE-3) clocks in a 1 petaflop. Some people say it "doesn't count" because it has specialized hardware to compute "molecular dynamics simulations," but then F@H would more or less fall into that
Re: (Score:2)
No association between us and the Globus project