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Folding@Home Client's Performance Impact Measured

Posted by timothy on from the drops-in-the-protein-bucket dept.

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."

8 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before... by aslagle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    this article isn't going to convince him.

  2. Still not a guilt-free process... by PseudoThink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't get me wrong, I think distributed computing projects are great, especially those focused on legitimately useful research. However, running a distributed computing client on a machine at work will likely cause it to consume more electricity. A Pentium 4 has a maximum power consumption in the range of 65W, no? So every computer you install this on is like leaving a 60W lightbulb on 24-7, year-round. If you do this with many computers, I think that may add up to a nontrivial expense that you're essentially stealing from the company, no? Just playing devil's advocate...

    1. Re:Still not a guilt-free process... by kennylives · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      What many businesses do not accept is the security and liability implications of running outside, unapproved code on their machines, expecially production boxen. "Who supports it when it crashes?", "What assurance do we have that it's not a trojan, gathering data?", "Why should we pay for their IT needs?" - these are just a few of the questions that a reasonably intellegent IT manager should/would be asking.

      Of course, after all that, there's still the argument that "They're our machines, not yours. That's why." There's no easy way to answer that one and win.

      --

      Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...

  3. Just maybe.. by JPelorat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...there's more than one reason it's called "Folding@HOME" and not "Folding@WORK". Hmm?

    If you can't get permission the first time around, repeated pestering will not help your case.

    --
    Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
  4. Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. by gazbo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    But what about electricity usage? The recent case of the sysadmin who was fined a huge amount by the university for running a distributed client gave some figures:
    • Electricity usage increases by ~60% when spare cycles are used.
    • Logic switches in CPUs wear out up to ~15% sooner than if the idle cycles were left unused giving them time to cool down - we all know what a problem heat can be.
    • Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.

    OK, so I don't really believe the last one because it seems that most buildings have such variation in number of computers and people moving through etc. But that doesn't stop the other two for being equally accurate.
  5. Exactly... by theduck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...but it might help you get to the truth about why you're not being allowed to do it.

    We all know that the vast majority of CPU cycles are wasted. If your boss is telling you that you can't do it because of the impact on the workstation, they're most likely lying to you. Most bosses either

    • don't understand the impact
    • don't trust you to be keeping the best interests of the business in mind when you load stuff like this onto company workstations
    • are afraid they'll get reamed if this stuff causes, or is blamed for causing, any problem with company IS resources

    Of course, addressing these issues with your boss is far from easy, but if proving to them that workstation performance is not the issue forces them to raise the real issue then at least you have a chance.

    --
    How can we afford to ever sleep
    So sound again
    --ebtg
  6. Performance impact is the least of your worries by Kombat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Managers and IT admins don't decline this sort of thing over something as pedantic as performance degradation - they decline it over much bigger issues, including but not limited to

    • Risk of virus/worm infection
    • Risk of inadvertently exposing a security hole
    • Risk of compromising proprietary information
    • Decreased employee productivity over installing/watching the client
    • Lost time/money if this thing crashes an employee's machine, just as they were putting the finishing touches on the customer presentation due in 20 minutes


    Does anyone really think that the reason these things are being rejected by management is because of performance???

    --
    Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
  7. Whoa. If only I was so lucky... by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A Duron 1.2GHz with 256 MB of RAM is a low end system? That's a pretty decent low-end system of *now*, but what about using a machine that's 2 years old or more? You know, those sub 1-GHz machines and 128MB of RAM (if you're lucky)? Man, that low-end system is far faster than what I use at work (and what most people use).

    What about memory consumption? Having to hit the swapfile more often because its running would slow down a compile job, or heck, just the apparent responsiveness of the system. If opening a document takes 10 seconds longer because the system has to swap, I'd say that has a far more annoying impact than the miniscule extra CPU resources...