Ztalker Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Hello there... I recently joined an internet program that helps people all across the world. It's called Folding@home: http://folding.stanford.edu/ It taps some of your computer speed, and puts it to work on medical programs. This way, your computer will help people in need. The diseases the project is currently working on are: * Alzheimer's Disease * Cancer * Huntington's Disease * Osteogenesis Imperfecta * Parkinson's Disease * Ribosome & antibiotics I 'work' at an Elementary school, and that's where my interest in this project was awakened. I work in groups of different ages there, from 4 year olds to 12 year olds. What this has to do with this project? A girl (4 year old) and her brother (10 year old) lost their mother to cancer this year. It was very hard to see those kids trying to pick up their lives again. Several months later (this tuesday) we sang a song in the class. Incidentaly, the song played at his mothers funeral. The teachter asked 'permission' of him, and he agreed. He cried nevertheless. It kind of broke my heart... Those 'incurable' diseases are just...terrible. So, even if you're interested or not, please take a lookd at the site, and tell the tale. It's just a matter of downloading, and letting the program do it's work in the background. http://folding.stanford.edu/ You can help... PS: Jae, could you perhaps give some information regarding th afformentioned diseases? I'll post some links by Tuesday. --Jae Thanks in advance... Ztalker Team number: 59712 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 I'm running folding@home on a team from my school. I always have it running in the background. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swphreak Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Since I got a new multicore processor and a crap load of RAM on this new rig, I decided to install FAH and let it run. I can leave it running, and do everything else without so much as a slowdown. It's awesome. Since there's no team for the LF, I've just been working on the Penny Arcade team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bimmerman Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 Just so you all know, you can also download and run FAH on a ps3, which chews through the work packet in like 9 hours as opposed to days. Here's the article, the link was really buggy so I just copied the text. PlayStation3 surpass PCs in Folding@Home computations Games and Entertainment By Humphrey Cheung Friday, March 23, 2007 18:42 The recent release of the Folding@Home plug-in for PlayStation 3 game consoles has gotten off to a very successful start. According to statistics released today, more than 14,000 PS3 owners are working on the distributed protein-folding project and those consoles are currently contributing more than double the work of Windows computers. According to Folding@Home, the PlayStation 3's are computing work units at 346 trillion floating point operations a second which is more than 200 trillion more than Windows machines, despite the fact that there is a greater than a ten to 1 ratio of Windows computers to PlayStation 3 consoles working on the project. The Folding@Home plug-in was released today along with the new firmware version 1.60. After downloading the firmware, PS3 owners will need to install the plug-in through the Network media menu. The plugin weighs in at 50 MB and from our experience, installs fairly quickly. So far the average work unit takes around eight to nine hours to complete. Work units on Windows computers generally take several days to finish. food for thought Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aash Li Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 I think I heard about this through some PS3 article actually. O.o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Windu Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 Sounds cool. I'll tell some friends about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Achilles Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 Sounds cool. I'm already committed to World Community Grid though My PC's cure for cancer is better than your PC's cure for cancer Nanny-nanny boo-boo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Windu Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 I wrote a note on facebook about it. Hopefully some of my friends will have dl'd it and run it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingerhs Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 Just so you all know, you can also download and run FAH on a ps3, which chews through the work packet in like 9 hours as opposed to days. Here's the article, the link was really buggy so I just copied the text.well, that actually makes quite a bit of sense if you understand the architecture of the Cell Processor vs. the architecture of a desktop processor such as a Core 2 or an Athlon64 X2. in short, the Cell Processor on the PS3 uses 6 individual Synergistic Processing Elements (or processor cores, if you will) to perform calculations. unlike a desktop processor, these cores are highly specialized for mathematic computations but lack an advanced instruction set for general use. this makes the PS3 an excellent platform for heavy computation-based applications such as folding@home, but it also increases the complexity of the software written for it as the software has to use its own instruction set translators in order to perform complex instructions. a desktop processor, however, has no need for a software-based instruction set as it is built directly into the processor and can simply be called by the application. the downside is that the processor takes more time to access its instruction set to perform computations which slows performance somewhat. in layman's terms, the PS3 processor is designed for intense mathematic computations while a desktop processor is designed for general purpose use. so, it makes sense that a PS3 processor makes short work of a folding@home set of computations when compared to a desktop processor. IMHO, if AMD will ever get their quad-core processors on the market and make it available for a 4x4 setup, any application like folding@home will give the performance advantage back to the desktop, assuming that folding@home is multi-threaded. the simple answer is this: 8 dedicated processor cores spread across two chips and probably 4MB or more of combined L1 & L2 cache on each chip. but enough of my techno-babble musings. i think that folding@home is a great idea, and i'll start running it when i get the chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prime Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 Interesting. I think I'll set this up at home. My wife's mother died from cancer a few years ago... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swphreak Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 Yeah, at the moment, the PC F@H client is not taking advantage of multiple cores. There is a beta client for people with more than 1 processor, but I'm waiting for it to be complete, and out of Beta. I think it's awesome that I can run F@H and Half-Life 2 at the same time and not have any slow downs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Negative Sun Posted October 4, 2007 Share Posted October 4, 2007 I thought this thread needed a bit of a revival as I have recently started using this program and would recommend anyone else to do so...I know my Barton chip isn't exactly state-of-the-art, but it gets the job done. Plus it doesn't hinder my performance in the slightest, so I'm sure anyone here with a PC that is a couple of years old even could do the same... (Plus it doesn't hurt that I joined the Custom PC Folding Team which is ranked #9 in the world and they give away a free X1950XT to a random member of their folding team every month ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jae Onasi Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 I just realized I never got back with those links on diseases. Here's some good starter info: Alzheimer's disease cancer Huntington's Disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta website Parkinson's disease Ribosomes Using antibiotics wisely Let me know if you need any other disease info, or something more in depth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mav Posted October 5, 2007 Share Posted October 5, 2007 I always saw that F@H thing on my PS3, but never really knew what it was or thought to try and find out, but now that I know, I'll go put my PS3 to work, thanks for the info, however late I may be, it's better than never knowing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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