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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."
this article isn't going to convince him.
United Devices is another company that does grid computing for cancer research. Which leads me to ask the following question (this may be a stupid question, but I'm bio illiterate)..
Wouldn't protein folding have some sort of similarity in finding a cure for cancer?
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
...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.
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...
...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!
Since most of these types of apps rely on "spare" CPU cycles, they basically keep the machine running at 100% cpu at all times. This causes the system to pull more power. Not only does this increase the electric bill, but it also keeps the temperature high all the time. This could have an impact on AC cooling costs as well, not to mention CPU life.
To me, that's the biggest deterrant from using it. I had been running the UnitedDevices client on my home computer. Since my computer ran all the time, I figured what the heck. But lately I've been trying to cut back on my power consumption. By leaving the UD client running 24/7, its like leaving an extra light bulb on, power wise.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
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.
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.
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) {
True story, with details ignored / changed to protect the guilty:
A production system handling multi-million dollar transactions began to slow and crash for absolutely no reason we could fathom. As each degradation of the system was costing the company involved tens of thousands of dollars at a shot, the president and other higher-ups were growing quite irate about the difficulty and wanted it fixed NOW.
A few days of frustrating troubleshooting by a team of techs discovered the problem: Someone had installed SETI@Home on the production system and it was interfering with other operations. Having incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars of opportunity-cost losses in those few days, the 'professional' responsible for that stupidity was thrown out on their ass the instant they were identified as the culprit.
The moral of the story: If you're paid to be a professional, be one. Use business systems for _business_ and if you want to run fun stuff, do it on your own time and on your own dime.