PS3 Dominates Folding@Home

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Paratus

Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
17,679
15,916
146
However on an individual basis GPU folding crushes the PS3, and rapes the CPU:
GPU: 60 GigaFLOPS/GPU
PS3: 25 GFLOPS/PS3
CPU: 1GFLOPS/CPU
 
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herkulease

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2001
3,923
0
0
sure being able to predit how protein's fold is great. But can someone show me anything that distributed computing has help discover?

It seems to be a big waste of your own electricity. Stanford in the end will get credit and the money from it.
 
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FrustratedUser

Lifer
Aug 16, 2001
22,505
4
81
Originally posted by: herkulease
sure being able to predit how protein's fold is great. But can someone show me anything that distributed computing has help discover?

It seems to be a big waste of your own electricity. Stanford in the end will get credit and the money from it.
Click to expand...

It has helped discover how much money people are willing to spend upgrading their rigs to be on the DC projects top 10 list.

:)
 
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Heifetz

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
1,398
0
0
I think if anything, DC and Seti are more a waste of resources than this. At least with Folding@home, there is some concrete research that is published because of the results.
 
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ShotgunSteven

Lifer
May 31, 2001
15,326
2
0
Originally posted by: Heifetz
I think if anything, DC and Seti are more a waste of resources than this. At least with Folding@home, there is some concrete research that is published because of the results.
Click to expand...

DC? Is that a specific program, or are you talking about Distributed Computing in general, of which Folding@Home is also a part?
 
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ForumMaster

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2005
7,792
1
0
true but when people see that their electric bill is going to be even higher now that the PS3 never idles, i think they'll stop. The PS3 is not very power efficent and will cost a lot.
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
Originally posted by: ForumMaster
true but when people see that their electric bill is going to be even higher now that the PS3 never idles, i think they'll stop. The PS3 is not very power efficent and will cost a lot.
Click to expand...
It's about 25 times as power-efficient for F@H as a sub-1 GHz PC, and 8-10 times as efficient as a modern PC.

All the people running old PCs 24/7 for folding would be better off (in terms of overall cost and for reducing power, pollution, and greenhouse gases) turning them off and pooling their electric bill savings to buy some PS3s or high-end GPUs.
 
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otispunkmeyer

Lifer
Jun 14, 2003
10,442
0
0
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Originally posted by: ForumMaster
true but when people see that their electric bill is going to be even higher now that the PS3 never idles, i think they'll stop. The PS3 is not very power efficent and will cost a lot.
Click to expand...
It's about 25 times as power-efficient for F@H as a sub-1 GHz PC, and 8-10 times as efficient as a modern PC.

All the people running old PCs 24/7 for folding would be better off (in terms of overall cost and for reducing power, pollution, and greenhouse gases) turning them off and pooling their electric bill savings to buy some PS3s or high-end GPUs.
Click to expand...

well doesnt the PS3 use around 200watts under load

thats better than the big boy GPU's, and considering how much faster it is at Folding than a regular PC, the power increase doesnt seem bad at al

(my old P4 2.4Ghz uses about 110watts flat out i think and the PSU has a ****** 0.6 PFC)

i dunno what my other rig uses (A64 @ 2.5ghz, gig of ram, x800gto, 1 hdd) but it idles at 90watts (Cool n quiet on) and the seasonic psu gives my 0.95+ PFC
 
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Goosemaster

Lifer
Apr 10, 2001
48,775
3
81
Originally posted by: Paratus
However on an individual basis GPU folding crushes the PS3, and rapes the CPU:
GPU: 60 GigaFLOPS/GPU
PS3: 25 GFLOPS/PS3
CPU: 1GFLOPS/CPU
Click to expand...

No doubt.
 
Wolfsraider

Wolfsraider

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2002
8,305
0
76
Originally posted by: herkulease
sure being able to predit how protein's fold is great. But can someone show me anything that distributed computing has help discover?

It seems to be a big waste of your own electricity. Stanford in the end will get credit and the money from it.
Click to expand...

Hmmm...

Like this maybe?

Cracked: the puzzle of protein origami

And

NEW PROTEIN FOLD MADE TO ORDER

Those were gathered here

Articles

I am sure there are other projects making progress as well but I dont follow them sorry :)
 
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Balt

Lifer
Mar 12, 2000
12,673
482
126
It's a worthy cause and everything, but I would be concerned about the longevity of my PS3 if it was running that all the time when I wasn't using it.

edit: For the record, I don't own a PS3. :p
 
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imported_Imp

Diamond Member
Dec 20, 2005
9,148
0
0
It will probably 'help' a bit, but I wonder how much of a backlog of 'folded proteins' they have to analyse. Considering the amount of extra pollution leaving those systems on full load 24/7 will create, it might end up giving more people asthma than curing anything. On that note, can corporations turn their effing fleet of machines off after work hours. If you have IT work, schedule the damn thing though e-mails like all the other special IT alerts.
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
Since this is done with the CPU not GPU, it does show that the PS3 does have the potential to add some serious physics and/or AI processing to games that probably couldn't be done on the 360's fewer cores.

Whether any game will ever use that potential is still a big maybe. Right now all of the PS3 ports of games are about the same or slightly inferior to the 360 versions.
 
C

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,313
7
81
The stats doubled since the first day. 612 out of 865 TFLOPS are from the PS3.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

Sony should sell a folding@home unit. Basically a PS3 with no HD, Blu-ray, bluetooth, wifi, HDMI, optical out, etc. Maybe a square enclosure. Since there are about 2 million folders off and on, a dedicated unit for $250 might sell well. Then there are all the other folding projects.
 
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