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.'"

Re:I do the laundry once a week

[cpricejones]

You can also visualize protein folding at home by going to www.pdb.org. The Protein Data Bank website has lots of cool structures to download, from small proteins up to large RNA-protein complexes like the ribosome (http://www.pdb.org/pdb/explore.do?structureId=2J00), which is one of the more remarkable achievements in structural biology. (Note that you may need a stronger graphics card to actually look at and rotate the whole ribosome as it is 64,000 atoms.) To actually look at these structures, you can use a program like PyMOL (http://pymol.sourceforge.net/).

Idea: F@H to help filter spam?

[Viking Coder]

So, here's my thought - before someone sends an email, they contact Folding@Home, identify themselves, say who they want to send an email to, and the contents of the email. F@H gives them a work unit. When they complete it, F@H signs their email. Your email client can filter emails based on how many work units the sender did to send it to you. If someone really wants your attention, they'll process for a day or two. If it's a casual email, one work unit will do. Maybe even a fraction of a work unit.

That way, if you read spam, at least you know that you contributed to F@H. If you want less spam, you turn up your threshold for how many work units the sender has to do.

Re:Global Warming!

[dreamchaser]

My tongue was only half in my cheek. I stopped running any and all distributed clients a couple of years ago precisely because of the resultant power/CPU utilization. I didn't do it for the environment though as I alluded to in my joke. I did it to save money on my electrical bill.

Re:Global Warming!

[dstates]

Of course there are also all of those Flash ads that continue to run even when the browser tab that they are on is not visible. They continue to consume CPU and electricity so they are also adding to your power bill. You think I am joking, but if you are like me, you may have a dozen tabs open at any given time and each of those pages may have several active graphics items on them. Adds up.

Good reason to run FireFox and AdBlock or FlashBlock. Even better, turn your PC off when you are not using it.

I was cleaning the basement and found an old copy of the New York Times. Still readable after a decade in storage and I didn't recharge it once. Amazing battery life :)

Re:Global Warming!

[vux984]

They're a university. I'm sure they have that taken care of.

Good point.

Be interesting to see someone try and claim it though. I wonder if the IRS would agree to its validity.

Probably help if they provided you with a proper receipt of some sort, which they don't.
And I don't think it'll help non-americans even if they did, unless they were registered as a chairty in other countries as well.

Re:Global Warming!

[DRobson]

You mean something like this [climateprediction.net]?

Your math is WAY off.

[Frangible]

FYI:

Old PS3s (90nm):
Folding@Home with visuals: 215 watts.
Folding@Home screen saver: 185 watts.

New PS3s (65nm):
Running Folding @ home 157

Considering the GPU is still 90nm, that 157 figure should drop to ~127 watts when the screen saver kicks in.

Typical energy costs are also more like $.10/kWh.

127W x 24h/d x 365d/y = 1112520 Watt-hours/y or 1113 kWh/y
at $.10/kWh that actually costs moar like: $111/y.
Or if for some reason you're paying $12/kWh, that's still only $134, less than half of your estimate.

Please stop spreading FUD about F@H and inflating the costs by more than a factor of two. It's important science that benefits everyone and the PS3 is actually very power efficient -- drawing less energy with F@H than your desktop 3D card does idle doing nothing.

If you don't want to participate in F@H and help science and humanity, that's your choice, but at least post the correct data to support your argument.

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

Unless of course you're a highly developed tumor who figured out how to post on Slashdot and fear F@H as a matter of self-preservation, which I could hardly blame you for.

KEEP FOLDING!