Slashdot Mirror
Folding@Home Client's Performance Impact Measured
EconolineCrush writes "Trying to convince your boss to let you run Stanford's Folding@Home client on the machines at work? Here's an article that measures the performance impact of running the Folding@Home client that might help. The article examines the client's impact on the performance of business applications, games, workstation applications, and more. When set up correctly, the Folding@Home client can be run transparently in the background with only a negligible impact on system performance, which means your boss has one less reason to turn you down."
...my completed results could be sent.
I ran their Linux client on a couple machines and it ran ok, didn't impact things too badly (remember "nice"?). But when it went to upload the finished results, it could never connect to the server that takes the finished data.
After two weeks of that, I pulled the client down. No one bothered to respond to my email, one person pointed to a discussion group for assistance, but since I'm already being overly generous with my time, it was more bother than it was worth.
No! .. slows down the pr0n downloads =)
/wave ;)
Its pretty common knowledge that running IDLE Tasks consume nearly no CPU time. Of course the overall performance will be SLIGHTLY lower because of context switching and the time it takes for the idle process to finish its time slice (no it wont preempt after 1 op or something - will do a few usecs of processing till the OS notices something else has to be done)...
The real question, which hasnt been answered on that article is how much network bandwith does it consume? I'm running folding@home on a few machines here but never really had the time to check how much of our network bandwith its taking away...
Hopefully not that much
ps.: awake for 32 hours, this posting might not make sense at all
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
And the best thing with UD is: You get 1gig worth of Data from EasyNews for every 15 CPU Days! :)
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
They have a message board (phpbb!) and not only is there a knowledgable community, but the admins usually comment.
http://forum.folding-community.org/
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Your boss has EVERY *right* to turn you down.
He has NO *reason*.
I don't know if this is widely known yet but at work we have the google toolbar installed on our windows 2k workstations.
:-) There is also mention of being able to participate in other such distributed computing projects in the future.
The MIS guy at least approved their use.
Last week, I saw that the Google Toolbar had self updated, and one of the new features was the ability to opt in for participation in the Folding@Home project through the use of the Google Toolbar.
It appears that at the time this feature is limited to only a select clients. Nevertheless I sent a request to the MIS guy about it, and if I could enable it. He had no issues with it. (Aka run it if you want)
Perhaps if the MIS/IT person already lets you use the Google Toolbar on the Windows machine, then they would probably be more trusting of running Folding@Home through the Google Toolbar.
I haven't noticed any significant slow downs using regular mode, and in any case you can switch between regular and conservative modes. Conservative mode running when you're not using the computer.
Also although I dont have the link at the moment handy (at home on my Mac
.... ... }
int main (void) {
No. The electricity used is not the issue within a company. The machines are on 24x7 anyway; the business has alreay accepted that cost of doing business.
Wrong. Particularly with larger corporate purchases, some buys calculate energy usage based on 9-10 hours a day on, and the remainder on low-power mode, and use that in their decision making.
Get off my launchpad!
In any modern operating system, a "low priority" thread will happily take 100% of the CPU if nothing else is running. Low priority doesn't mean it hangs on 10% just in case something wants the CPU -- it means that if a high priority and a low priority process both want the CPU, the high priority process is going to get a larger slice.
Doubtful. Other diseases, perhaps- prions and Alzheimer's are the ones I usually hear mentioned in relation to protein folding studies. Cancer is too broad a category, and I don't think most cancers involve misfolded proteins. Mutated proteins, certainly, but you need to take an entirely different computational approach to deal with those.
Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.
[I'm a mechanical engineer and have done some airconditioning design work]
Actually, computers can have a significant effect on air-conditioning services of buildings, particularly large computer labs which are in constant use (ie. computers are pumping out heat continually). I would not be at all surprised to find out that the running cost of airconditioning for a building would increase as a result of significantly more computers (or, as in this case, the computers pumping out significantly more heat).
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
That's why I use Prime 95. It's designed to find hideously large prime numbers, so while not as useful to the human race as the biochem ones my spare cycles aren't going to be making anyone else rich. And I'm a mathematics geek, so it's pleasing in that sense as well.
Anyone who doesn't use a cycle-sucker is scum. Think about it - how much power is wasted through PC idle time? How much money does that wasted time cost you, through your power bills? How many people will die today for the want of a few pence to buy some food or water?
Distributed computing helps me sleep at night.
"similarity" in finding a cure for cancer. post a reply or email me to clarify, b/c I think I can answer your question.
a quick bio summary:
There are about 35,000 genes in the human genome, which means there are >35,000 different kinds of proteins in our bodies over our lifetime. Each of these proteins has a 3-dimensional structure that is nearly impossible to predict from genetic information alone. The 3-dimensional structure of a protein, along with its composition, determines the functionality of the protein. Determining the 3D structure of a protein and discovering the steps necessary for a peptide chain to wriggle up into a mature protein is called the "Protein Folding Problem"
In many kinds of Cancer, genetic mutations have occurred that cause either a problem with the way a protein folds up and thus changed its functionality; or a mutation has occurred such that the genetic instructions have changed, causing some proteins to be made more or less often than usual. Usually what happens is a whole lot of things get changed before cancer is diagnosed.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
usually when idle, operating systems tell the cpu to sleep. in x86, this is called HLT. when it sleeps, it uses less electricity, it heats up less, etc...
(does not apply to windows 95/98, they dont HLT at idle. if you're using either of those systems, there are third party programs to HLT at idle time, though, to cool down the cpu.)
-- Matti Nikki
Folding@Home won't run on any of my Debian Unstable machines. It segfaults shortly after execution. Haven't had the time to track it down yet. Right now I am only running Folding on Debian Testing.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42