Folding@home GPU2 Beta Released, Examined

ThinSkin writes "Stanford has recently released an update to their Folding@home GPU-accelerated client, which includes notable upgrades such as support for more current Radeon graphics cards and even a visualizer to see what's going on. ExtremeTech takes a good look at the new Folding@home GPU2 client and interviews Director Dr. Vijay Pande about the project. To the uninitiated, Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which hundreds of thousands of PCs and PS3s devote a portion of their computing power to crunch chunks of biological data. The goal is 'to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.'"

Ati Only

[Fross]

From TFA, interestingly this bypasses DirectX and interfaces with the card directly (I guess you'd want to, to throw maths at it instead of vertices)

However it only runs on R600-based Ati cards right now. It also requires .Net framework. They do say they're "investigating" an nVidia version, but that sounds a while away.

Interestingly also, it claims to parallelize processing the atoms, so it must use the individual stream processors on the graphics card directly.

Printer friendly link

[computernut]

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=226537,00.asp [extremetech.com]

Re:Global Warming!

[vux984]

You shouldn't be joking.

Folding @ Home on a PS3 costs the average participant around $150-200 year in electricity if they run it 24x7. Up to $400+ in places where electricity is more expensive. PCs average less, but only because so many of them are lower power, while all PS3s are high wattage.

I think its a worthwhile project, but the electricity people are donating isn't free and F@H uses a lot more electricity than most people think. "Oh, I've got my PC on anyway", or "Oh it can't be as much as my fridge." both of which are mistaken, your fridge uses a fraction of what a PS3 running F@H does, and even if your PC is on, running at idle or going to sleep uses a LOT less power than maxxing out the cpu and/or gpu 24x7.

A PS3 running @ 280W 24x7 for a year:

280W x 24h/d x 365d/y = 2452800 Watt-hours/year or 2452 kWh/y

at $@.12/kWh that'll cost you: $294.00 / year

Then multiply that by the number of PC's running it... it adds up fast.

Like I said, its a good program and a good cause, BUT its not free. A kid/teen shouldn't be running it without a parents permission and understanding of the cost.

I don't like the F@H 'propaganda' because I think its somewhat deceptive about the costs. Its relying on peoples attitude that their free cpu time is truly free to prevent them thinking about the real costs. If you probe they don't lie about the costs, but ethically they really should be more upfront about them.

And now that there is money involved, I should choose the best use of it. When I'm faced with a decision of choosing the best place to donate $300 I think their are other causes more worthy of my money than F@H. But that's a personal choice. If you want to donate to F@H, by all means do so.

One final issue - generally when you donate more than $10-20 to charity you get a tax receipt. $150-500 quite a bit more than $10.

Translation of "protein folding related diseases."

[denis-The-menace]

"to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases."

FYI: This means Prions related diseases => Mad cow disease

Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming?

[LotsOfPhil]

Here is a post from the Nvidia/CUDA forums from Mike Houston, one of the Folding at Home people: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=28868&view=findpost&p=224490 [nvidia.com]

Re:Global Warming!

[SecondHand]

It seems that the PS3 40 GB consumes only half of what you said (135 Watts, see http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/30/40gb-ps3-features-65nm-chips-lower-power-consumption/ [engadget.com]).

So you can go and buy a second PS3.

Re:Global Warming!

[vux984]

Thanks! You are right.

There was information when the PS3/F@H launched that consumption was 280-300W, but apparently that was actually around 200-220W so my post above was out by ~$70, and now with the newer lower wattage PS3s the price comes down even more.

But even at 135W, assuming the same .12c kWh I used in my original post that's ~$150/year. Maybe not a big deal to some, but how many would still sign up if they had to pay $150 to f@h directly instead of having it nickle and dime them daily on their power bill? I suspect the user count would be orders of magnitude lower.

Re:Global Warming!

[i.of.the.storm]

Not really, it does more FLOPS but it generates less usable scientific data which is reflected in the PPD it gets, the SMP client (multiprocessor) is the client that gives them the most research value and thus is worth the most currently. Also, the GPU clients blow the PS3 out of the water in terms of FLOPS, and that was just when the x1900xtx was the top ATI folding compatible card. The R600 series GPUs have 320 stream processors and a ridiculous amount of floating point horsepower. So, you either haven't seen many PCs or you're just talking out of your ass, or a PS3 fanboy. Either way, you don't know what you're talking about. But then, you're an anonymous coward so that's to be expected.

Re:Global Warming!

[vux984]

Accounting for the electricity cost is your problem, but they should provide the details of who you donated it to that is needed for tax purposes.

They would need to be registered charity though, for taxes. You can't just say you donated money to X and call it a day.

Re:Global Warming!

[vux984]

Using a power meter connected between my desktop and the wall I only use $24 per year 24/7 (well, add 50% more for air con) on my FX55 gaming computer.

Please show your work:

W : Wattage of your PC running full tilt?
P : Price of electricity in $/kwh in your area? P
8760 : hours / year

W x 8760 = Wh (Watt-Hours)
Wh / 1000 = kWh (convert from Wh to kWh)
kWh * P = Total

I'd like to see how you get to $24. Because that would require either telling me that your "FX-55 gaming rig" is averaging ~16Watts at full load, that you pay less than 1/2 cent for a kWh of electricity, or that your PC is idle and sleeping a LOT more than you seem to think.

My estimates put an FX-55 gaming rig going full tilt at around 180-200W, and electricity in the first world territories ranges from 5 - 35 cents, averaging around 8-11 cents. The number of hours in a year isn't really up for dispute. So I'm curious how your going to make the numbers come out without undermining your claim.

Re:Global Warming!

[The -e**(i*pi)]

https://www.cpushare.com/wiki/cpushare/ElectricityCost [cpushare.com]

Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam?

[Viking Coder]

The stupid part about hashcash is that no useful work is done. I'm proposing an idea that would at the very least get something useful accomplished.

There are all sorts of third parties involved in sending email. I'm not proposing a solution for everyone - I'm suggesting one possibility.

Re:Your math is WAY off.

[vux984]

Your right I was off on the original data, by about $70 bucks, because I grabbed the wrong number. Early reports on ps3 f@h rated it at 280-300W, but this was corrected down to 190-220W thereafter. My mistake there and I've posted that I was wrong already elsewhere in this thread.

As for the price of electricity, and your assertion that its 10c? vs 12c? Now were just playing statistics. I could justify mine by noting that prices are generally higher in Europe and Japan for electricity. (Its the equivalent of 25c in Japan IIRC, for example.) Or I could point out that the electricity is higher in the states where the population density is higher... so even if the average rate if you look at it by state is .10, the average person pays more than that because they mostly live in states that are higher. New York and California are both markedly above than 10c 50% and 70% higher, respectively, in fact.

But it doesn't really matter, the cost of a kWh ranges from ~.05 to ~.30. The average is between .09-.14 depending on how you arrange the data. (Especially if you consider the places where there is ladder pricing -- where the first X is one price, and beyond that its another price... a high energy device always on can move you up the rungs of the ladder into a new rate category.)

As for the newer PS3 being less power hungry, that's true too, and a fair comment.

Please stop spreading FUD about F@H and inflating the costs by more than a factor of two

Oh, so when they upgraded the PS3 to 65nm a couple million of 90nm units power consumption dropped by a factor of 2?

I really hope no one got dissuaded by the bad data in your argument

Me too. I hope they dp their own math for their own circumstances and hardware and make an informed decision for themselves.

People in New York are going to find that even with my Watt numbers as off as they were, my final result for a 90m PS3 was far too LOW. (They pay .17 per kWh. so even at the correct Wattage of 215, they pay $351 for an 'old' ps3, and 256 for a new one. Making your $111 quote only 1/3rd their correct price for a 90nm unit, and less than half the price for a 65nm unit.

If I'm spreading 'fud', what do they call it when you spread false reassurances?

And its not just New York -- Conneticut pays .18, Hawahii .24, ... and lots of places in Europe and Japan are in that 15-25 ballpark. For all of -them- my numbers were too LOW. ... into not running F@H when they might've contributed a key bit of research important for understanding drug candidates for P53 cancer suppression or Alzheimer's disease treatments. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but arguing against F@H makes me a sad panda.

Yeah, and when you walked past the unicef box and didn't put a quarter in you just made the difference between the next einstein living or dying. shame on you. just set mankind back a century.

I'm not saying people should stop contributing. I'm saying people should be AWARE of what they are contributing. And while I agree that the numbers I posted should have been more 'right', and I regret that they were off, the visibility of the issue remains important.

I support F@H's mission. I don't support them being funded largely by unsuspecting parents of teens who've essentially 'subscribed' to f@h and had the bill tacked on to mom&dad's utilities without so much as a lineitem -- or installed it on all the pcs at work thereby billing it to their employer.

I realize f@h isn't at 'fault' for this, but they have an ethical obligation to be very upfront about what it it will cost, and maybe even perform some sort of basic validation, like requiring an address and sending a snail mail to the occupant thanking them for subscribing, and advising them of the impact. Sure it won't stop people from signing up illicitly but it would mean a lot if F@H made an effort to contribute to ensure the people it was taking money from were actually aware of it.

Re:Global Warming!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also don't forget to turn off the feature that allows you to sync with your PSP (well unless, of course, you have a PSP and use it :\) it runs i believe at th every least an extra 10 knh (I want to say perhaps 20[?] but i risk sounding like a jackass and more importantly, being wrong). This feature will draw power when you have the PS3 powered down so short of flipping the switch in the back, you will be blowing money for no reason at all.

I thinks called auto-play or something, anyway check to see if you have it on, I have known a number of people who had it on and dont even own a PSP. lawl.