Slashdot Mirror
IBM Grid Near 50,000 machines - Slashdot Users #13
another similar writes "IBM's World Community Grid is off to a roaring start. Since kicking off six weeks ago (original Slashdot story), the grid has grown to almost 36,000 users with almost 50,000 machines. Growth continues as more media coverage hits.
There is a team of Slashdot users - currently ranked 13th in points with only 79 members. If you have spare cycles, download the software, join us and crank for medicine. For those of you with dual processor systems, you'll have to use a homebrewed tool - beyond two is not supported yet. Alas, you also have to be running Redmond's finest. According to their FAQ, a Linux client is slated for development in 2005."
Which is why there are only 79 /.ers signed up. When they get the Linux client, they'll get 79,000 /.ers.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
a Beowu...
no.
I can't say it.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
If, as the submitter implies, Windows ME is Redmond's "finest"...
It's SOOOOOoooo..... long to wait for.
Does the client work under ABI translation on Linux or *BSD on x86?
There is a team of Slashdot users - currently ranked 13th in points with only 79 members.
and
Alas, you also have to be running Redmond's finest. According to their FAQ, a Linux client is slated for development in 2005.
Seriously, are they at ALL suprised that there are only 79 members? They are talking about the linux capital of the universe.
For those keeping track,
"IT IS ANTICIPATED EVENTUALLY THAT IBM WILL TRANSFER WORLD COMMUNITY GRID TO A NON-IBM OWNED WORLD COMMUNITY GRID ENTITY OR ANOTHER ENTITY"
This is from the license. Just something to watch for in the future if you like Big Blue (or don't like them) or are concerned about it.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
This requires two computers, one "fast" and one "slow," to work, but you can get a massive number of points. Run the WCG client on your slow computer for up to 12-13 days (the limit is two weeks per unit) or until its almost done, then run it (over a network or whatever) on your fast computer. The result is a work unit that took a long long time with a fast machine's speed rating. BAM! HUGE POINTS.
They should really fix it and record the machine speed every few %.
It's funny that the article makes a big deal about having only 79 members and being ranked 13th in total points. Well, as of now, they are also ranked 15th in total members, so when you combine the two facts it isn't nearly as impressive.
That's like saying your car comes from Yugoslavia's Finest!
Also, the Global Grid Exchange client runs in a secure Java sandbox, so there's no fear of being 0wned by malicious code.
crank for medicine
no comment...
</too easy>
- c -
It seems to run on WINE for me, but I've only ran it for maybe 3 minutes now. I'm using TransGaming's Cedega (formerly WineX) version of WINE to run it though, so I'm not quite sure if it works with plain WINE.
-b0lt
got sig?
http://www.distributed.net/ Been around forever, have done far more impressive work than Big Blue . . . and I think they've had Linux clients for a little while.
Slashdot should have a team developing a client.
Yeah but it'd be written in Perl.
Trolling is a art,
Windows only, and only 2 processors? Darn. Now what am I going to do with the 14 node ClusterKnoppix I put together this afternoon. ::Digitac
At the risk of sounding naive, is anybody aware of a group of amateurs running a grid on a smaller scale.
I'm not thinking of your typical "let's all save the world with cpu cycles" kind of project. Rather, somthing on a smaller scale that allows you to join the grid with the intent of using it for your own projects.
I did some work last year that made use of apple's grid software on some lab computers at school but it would have been nice to have access to 1000 or 2000 machines for a day or so.
I can imagine there are sharing issues that might make it impractical but I can also imagine that it might just work considering, at least for me, the sporadic nature of the need for such a grid.
Well, forty minutes after the post going live, Slashdot Users team member count has shot us into #1 position. Now we'll just need to see how long it's going to take to push Big Blue (x6), five members of the G8 and Norway below us in the point count. I'm guessing several weeks, but maybe this will get more bang for the buck than I had anticipated.
To clarify, since I've been poked several times in comments already - "Redmond's Finest" was intended to be dripping with sarcasm.... But most Slashdot users are likely wicked smart enough to have known that.... I did enjoy the quip about DOS 6.22... Bravo!
With respect to your options on teams, rather than Jews for Science, I would suggest considering girlsoflove.com, who's page states:
Web Cam girls and woman offering their machines when they are not online to help and give back to the world. If you put your machine to help this project and join our team, Send us and email and we will offer you Free time to come and chat with us. The Girls from GIRLSOFLOVE.COM We also provide web broadcasting web video chat conference applications We are from all over the world Montreal Quebec Toronto Vancouver Canada america usa france britain italia brazil mexico argentina asia
This could be fulfilling in, er, other ways, but obviously, being on the #1 team (in user count) and soon to be #1 in points, results, etc. is a lot cooler....
Thanks Slashdotters for taking things up another notch (or 20)!
Of course the reason for this is obvious right? windows dominated the planet not only in installed systems but in installed systems with cycles to spare. i.e. desktops. So dont cry your eyes out over it not being linux compatible. The excess linux bandwidth after you subtract our the servers is not going to be a lot. Console yourself that the TCO of linux is really a lot less when you figure that linux computers are already too busy to be bothered with Grid computing. :-)
Rosetta itself was written in fortran and only recently converted to C++. the C++ conversion was done using the incredibly well designed Objexx Library by stuart metzner and colleagues. This is a library that lets you write fortran code in C++. Before this people who tried to re-write this behemoth to C++ just died in the process. The objexx library let the whole thing be converted to C++ in one fell swoop. Now the program will slowly evolve from fortran style to C++ object orientation as it continues to grow. But in the meantime the code is productive. Nice Eh? The cool thing is that with a bit of optimization the code did not lose any appreciable speed in the conversion. So if you have legacy fortran you use for speed, consider converting it using Objexx. I was one of the people who argued for going to fortran95 not c++ because I feeared a speed loss; Iv'e become a convert
In any event the program is not like folding at home. That program tries to study in detail the picosecond evolution of single protien as it folds. Rosetta simply predicts the folded structure. Its actually quite fast at doing that. But it turns out it makes lots of different predictions. So you have to do it tens of thousands of times and then see which geometries of folded structures are favored statistically. Then you do the next protein. Eventually you work your way through the whole human genome.
also unlike folding at home the potential surface in rosetta is less physics based and more bayesian statistice. It has statistical potential for the probability of a peptide backbone structure occuring. And it has a probabilty for a sidechain amino acid sequence given a backbone structure. Multiply those together and bayes rule says the result is proportional to the probablity of a structrure given a sequence. You can read more about this here. Click on publications.
This statistical potential turns out to be so accurate that it can not only be used to predict the structure of proteins but it can be used in reverse to design a novel structured protein. Recently it was used to design a protein with a tolopology that had never previously existied in nature. This is rather an amazing results. Others had previously redesigned the sequences of existing topologies or perturbed those topologies or created some special case topologies. But Brian Kuklman in David Baker's lab actually started from a napkin sketch and designed a protein from scratch.
After you predict the structure of a protein, one thing you can do is ask if that structure is like another Protein you have seen before. You can compare the structure of a model to a real protein using a program known as MAMMOTH. While there are a variety of programs for comparing two proteins this one is particularly good for the case of comparing an inaccurate model to an experimentally known structure. If they match then you can assume the protiens may share a related function or evolutionary origin (or not!).
whihc brings us to what proteins are. Think of DNA as a disk drive that
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You know how it works; Dual-booters will answer Linux despite being in Windows. People with multiple machines will answer Linux refusing to admit it if they actually use Windows more. People who have a Linux server with a ssh session active will answer Linux despite surfing in from a Windows desktop. The casual Fedora user who according to themselves just havent gotten around installing Linux again since they replaced their harddrive... There is prestige in using Linux here, most of Slashdot uses Windows, but most of it would also like to pretend that they arent.
To put it the proper way: Slashdot is mostly made up of posers.