PS3 Client for Folding@Home Debuts, ATI GPU Version Soon

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..

[PeterJK (592822)]

Nice news. I'm sure Sony will make lots of PR capital out of this ala the subject ;) Will this run on PS3 Linux or natively on the regular OS?

Re:Hehe, PS3 cures cancer..

[GundamFan (848341)]

Naw... the PS3 is already panned for having too many features... if it cures cancer people are just going to throw up there hands in frustration and go buy a Wii.

All kidding aside... if you had a PS3 would you run this in down time?

Re:

[grazzy (56382)]

It needs to be transparant as a screensaver or something. Also, I'm not sure I'd want my PS3 on all the time either unless it handles heat extremely well. Something we've learnt from history that not all consoles do. Even the old Super NES (NES16) used to choke after a couple of days... I've got friends that fried theirs after heavy-duty playing sessions.

Yees, I Will

[Uukrul (835197)]

if you had a PS3 would you run this in down time?
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:

[Phisbut (761268)]

Can you elaborate more on why electricity is checper at night? Arond here they read the kw/h meter once a month and do a simple calculation.

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

Feeling Bad About Curing Cancer

[iamlucky13 (795185)]

For no reason other than because I'm evil, I present to everyone the following back-of-the-napkin/sources-from-wikipedia analysis:

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:

[AcidLacedPenguiN (835552)]

sweet 3 in a row, IM ON A tROLL TODAY!!!!

10 peta FLOPs?

[MikeRT (947531)]

That's like... 10,000,000,000,000,000 instances of taxpayers dollars being wasted! How many more times does this have to flop before it's canceled?

Diebold

[Halo1 (136547)]

Imagine what would happen if they could also harness Diebold's [slashdot.org] flops...

Give Me!

[by Anonymous Coward]

x86 continues to get left in the computational dust.

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:

[the_humeister (922869)]

I don't get it. Run Windows/Linux on Nvidia hardware? What general purpose CPUs does Nvidia make? Besides, if they're really so adamant about supporting other architectures, how come the only non-x86 drivers they make publicly available are for Itanium?

Re:Give Me!

[DrXym (126579)]

Exactly. IBM have been using Linux as the development platform for the Cell processor so it's not as far fetched as it sounds. Sony could have Linux running on the PS3 from the get go. It remains to be seen if they do though or what it looks like... It would be awesome if it did. At that point the PS3 *is* a computer (not just for tax dodging purposes), as well as a kick ass console, media jukebox. When you think of it from that perspective, the price really isn't unreasonable, especially compared to the Mac Mini (for example).

Re:

[BenjyD (316700)]

Is there even a mainstream CPU that uses the x86 ISA any more? They're all RISC internally.

Homebrew support? doubt it.

[plasmacutter (901737)]

I'll bet you a million bucks the ps3 has something similar to what tivo uses..

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:

[jonwil (467024)]

The PS2 linux kit allowed direct access to the CPU and graphics of the PS2 with the full capabilities of both being available to developers. Access to the sound and I/O were given through libraries too.

As far as I know the main restriction with the PS2 kit was access to the DVD drive.

Re:

[imsabbel (611519)]

Short answer:no
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!

[MobyDisk (75490)]

Huh?

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:Give Me!

[elrous0 (869638)]

If you think for a second that Sony is going to "open up" the PS3 and just let you put whatever homebrew software you want on it, considering their record with the PSP, you're living in a dream world. Sony are control FREAKS. Their media-producing divisions are so scared at even the HINT that the system could be used for pirated games/media that they would rather take a financial loss than risk conceding even the slightest BIT of control of their system to homebrew coders.

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:

[Mongoose (8480)]

Ah... the PS2 Linux 'kit' wasn't locked down really at all from a software standpoint. Hell, I don't even run the default distro on mine. All the cool kids run the debian based Black Rhino on theirs. It's not like the limits of the DMA access DVD drive mattered in the end. I just used the hdd, usb, and network personally. It was fun to port my little fps game engine over and play net games with PC clients. No signed binaries -- the main control feature was how you boot into OS, and I will admit there

GPU folding seems more interesting

[the_humeister (922869)]

There aren't much details on the ATI version. I'm guessing there's no Nvidia version yet because of the lack of IEEE 854 compliance in viedo cards, so they'd have to create a special version for each video card. But it's pretty neat what you can do with video cards these days besides play video games.

Re:

[confused one (671304)]

If you click through some of the links on the Folding@Home site, you'll find that they were originally using Nvidia processors; but, found they got much higher performance with their code on the ATI processors. Therefore they decided to concentrate their efforts on ATI.

Re:

[the_humeister (922869)]

You're right. I guess I missed that somehow. On the other hand, how much faster is the "slower" Nvidia version compared to the pure CPU version? Unless it's slower (or even if it is), I don't see why they wouldn't make that version available too. But, first things first I guess: finish the faster one and then work on the slower one.

what about nuclear weapons?!

[namekuseijin (604504)]

The Cell processor is vastly superior to the "Emotion Engine" and yet, Sony doesn't seem concerned that it'll be used to build supercomputer networks by menacing countries...

sarcasm here, please... ;)

100+ Million PS3s - Staggering To Think About

[by Anonymous Coward]

The Broadband Engine in the PS3 has roughly 210 Gflops of power at 3.2Ghz. That is around an order of magnitude more than most people's current Intel desktop PCs. Although that isn't really the full story since it is the memory architecture that makes Cell chips so much more powerful than Intel chips, but that is a whole other, very cool, subject. If even a small percentage of the 100+ million PS3s Sony will sell over the next five years are added to computation pool, the results will be staggering.

Re:

[imsabbel (611519)]

Sorry, but the memory archtitecture is what makes cell suck, relatively.
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:

[mwvdlee (775178)]

Does power consumption of the Cell lower when not all the SPE's are used? There'll probably be quite a few games that won't use all the available processor power (think games like "Buzz" or dance games). If power consumption remains (relatively) stable, you might run F@H in the background during gaming sessions.

Re:

[mwvdlee (775178)]

I was hoping to find some numbers on the F@H site, for instance a comparison between a new Duo Core whatever compared to the Cell. Seems to me this would make for a good real-world comparison of the kind of tasks the Cell processor is ideally suited for.

been there

[macadamia_harold (947445)]

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.

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

[ZachPruckowski (918562)]

This isn't a planted story by Sony *at all*.

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.

Wii?

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

I haven't been following things too closely, but has Nintendo made any moves to make a dev kit available that non-commercial developers can use? If so it would be cool if a version for the Wii could be made for this project.

A cure for cancer lost!

[gatkinso (15975)]

when little Jonny's monther made him turn off his game and come upstairs for dinner.

Oh well.

Finally!

[dthree (458263)]

Now you can use it for both! [youtube.com]

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

You are so right! Don't you just hate how these manufactures show up at owners houses and put a gun to their heads and force them to run computationally expensive apps on their hardware!

Ohhhh!!! Makes me sooooo mad!!!! Someone mod me up!!!

Oh wait, they don't...

Uh huh

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Most people just don't consider the cost. OP never said anyone was forced into it, but then again we all know you're trolling.

Re:This makes less sense than ever!

[dreamchaser (49529)]

For projects like F@H, which are doing important research that might help cure disease, perhaps the government should offer tax credits based on how many units one puts out? It *does* cost money, which is precisely why SETI pioneered the idea. Low funding levels coupled with the need for supercomputing like capabilities. In essence *any* distributed computing project distributes not only the computational work, but the expense as well.

Re:

[Amouth (879122)]

"SETI pioneered the idea" ???

http://www.distributed.net/ [distributed.net] was doing it long befor seti@home

Re:

[imsabbel (611519)]

Maybe you should just donate the fucking money (there is your tax reduction) and allow them to build a nice custom computer that will be much faster and better for the workload than those ugly hacks of clients that spend more time for fancy interface and screensavers and communication lag than they actually do something useful?

Tax credits?

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

I would assume whoever wants the massive computation is willing to pay a notable amount to anyone who allows their PS3 to be hooked up to it for a signficant time per month. Perhaps Sony could remind people of the money they "get back" after the high price?

Re:This makes less sense than ever!

[GundamFan (848341)]

Yeah only this isn't SETI@home... read a little bit... $300 donated to cancer research is a little less "silly" don't you think?

Re:This makes less sense than ever!

[datafr0g (831498)]

Not as silly as if the $300 donated to cancer research was caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research to prevent cancer caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research.

I HATE SILLY LOOPS

:)

Re:

[RonnyJ (651856)]

No matter what the cause, it's still important to consider the costs and the benefits of running it.

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:

[Overzeetop (214511)]

No, the cost of the computing cycles is worth more than the money to pure research. It may not be efficient, but the cost (both dollar and environmental) to buy/manufacture the processors and run them would be far greater than just running existing processors. Yes, there's the inherent inefficiency of distributed computing, but there is also sever inefficency in the process of donating, adminstrating, allocating, purchasing, monitoring, and replacing physical assets.

Put another way, is it cheaper to identif

Re:

[DrXym (126579)]

Much though I like SETI, I have to agree. Every consumer device, including PCs for home & office should be default be set to save as much power as possible. That means the operating system should stick devices in standby if they're idle and ultimately hibernate them. I believe Vista will do this and not before time. The amount of power wasted by empty offices filled with computers & monitors left on all night must be obscene.

Re:

[terraformer (617565)]

It is... Energy Star is working [energystar.gov] and has been [energystar.gov] working on it for some time. Running one of these clients could cost the end user as much as $200 a year (assuming a high end machine and 24x7 usage). Now, if they do not mind, great, but most do not realize it. Anyhow, for those machines just sitting idle, the cost savings are somewhere between $20-$100 (hi assumes 24x7 operation) a year if you employ system standby.

Full disclosure: I work on both of those projects.

Re:This makes less sense than ever!

[mwvdlee (775178)]

That's why you should run it in during winter; saves (somewhat) on the heating bill.

Re:This makes less sense than ever!

[fain0v (257098)]

As a person that does research on proteins, having better algorithms for protein folding would be a god send. . You have no idea how much time and effort is wasted on designing and expressing protein constructs that have no chance of folding properly. What we currently use for design (Tango, FoldIndex, PONDR, DisEMBL) is still inadequate. $300 may sound like a lot of money, but it is nothing compared to the cost of research.

Re:

[DaHat (247651)]

You are correct for the most part however not everyone pays their electric bill directly.

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

Re:

[elrous0 (869638)]

I guess someone with mod points fell for it. Sorry to call you out, man.

-Eric

Re:

[Ender Ryan (79406)]

Spoken like a true ignorant American who doesn't know shit about the rest of the world, or, indeed, about the politics of the United States itself.

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:

[stunt_penguin (906223)]

You're too full of shit for him to reply in full. It'd take all day.