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PS3 Client for Folding@Home Debuts, ATI GPU Version Soon
eliot1785 writes "Stanford's Folding@Home project is reporting that Sony debuted a Folding@Home client for the PlayStation 3 today in Germany. Researchers hope to use the power of the PS3's Cell processor to greatly expand the number of FLOPS of which their network is capable. F@H also announced today that they will release a client capable of running on ATI graphics processors. With these two new developments, F@H hopes to raise the total power of their distributed computing network to 1-10 petaflops. At the upper end of that target, the network would be faster than any current supercomputer, at least in terms of FLOPS."
Reader TommyBear points out a collection of papers showing scientific advances made by the F@H researchers.
For projects like F@H, which are doing important research that might help cure disease, perhaps the government should offer tax credits based on how many units one puts out? It *does* cost money, which is precisely why SETI pioneered the idea. Low funding levels coupled with the need for supercomputing like capabilities. In essence *any* distributed computing project distributes not only the computational work, but the expense as well.
Yeah only this isn't SETI@home... read a little bit... $300 donated to cancer research is a little less "silly" don't you think?
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
That's why you should run it in during winter; saves (somewhat) on the heating bill.
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Exactly. IBM have been using Linux as the development platform for the Cell processor so it's not as far fetched as it sounds. Sony could have Linux running on the PS3 from the get go. It remains to be seen if they do though or what it looks like... It would be awesome if it did. At that point the PS3 *is* a computer (not just for tax dodging purposes), as well as a kick ass console, media jukebox. When you think of it from that perspective, the price really isn't unreasonable, especially compared to the Mac Mini (for example).
This isn't a planted story by Sony *at all*.
I found out yesterday that someone I knew last year died of liver cancer over the summer. She was 19. I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of people out there who don't give a flying fuck if Sony gets good press about this. If it brings us a cure to cancer a year, a day, an hour sooner, it's a damn fine thing. I just hope most PS3 owners find out about it, and maybe we can cure cancer. If a company makes an extra million or two in the process, good for them.
Short answer:no
Longer answer: you are a attention whore
logest answer: please read around a bit, and know what the fuck you are takling about, becasuse right now you dont.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
As a person that does research on proteins, having better algorithms for protein folding would be a god send. . You have no idea how much time and effort is wasted on designing and expressing protein constructs that have no chance of folding properly. What we currently use for design (Tango, FoldIndex, PONDR, DisEMBL) is still inadequate. $300 may sound like a lot of money, but it is nothing compared to the cost of research.
And, in other news, Apple dumped PowerPC for the Intel chip.
I wonder if Apple knows something nVidia doesn't?
Maybe you should just donate the fucking money (there is your tax reduction) and allow them to build a nice custom computer that will be much faster and better for the workload than those ugly hacks of clients that spend more time for fancy interface and screensavers and communication lag than they actually do something useful?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Huh?
1) a video card does not contain a general purpose processor and is not capable of running an operating system. It contains a GPU, which is very fast for certain subsets of mathematical calculations, but that is all. It can't effectively branch, doesn't offer memory protection, etc. There are the biggest parts of a modern general-purpose CPU
2) Video cards are not tied to x86: A video card communicates with a bus like PCI or AGP. The system could be running an PowerPC chip, or a cell chip, or an x86 chip. nVidia has cards that run on all three of these environments.
3) You talk about the cell processor and the PS3, but that doesn't have anything to do with x86 being left behind. The cell processors are a massively parallel processor designed for running video games and computational problems. It will probably be inefficient (per watt and per cycle) to run a normal desktop OS on it. Not that it isn't possible, but that isn't what it is for.
4) You point out how x86 must be bad because Microsoft switched to PowerPC for the 360. So why did Apple switch to x86 from PowerPC, and suddenly everything is faster and lower power?
[quote]If Jobs hadn't blown the IBM relationship Apple could be shipping quad-970 workstations with Cell daughtercards today.[/quote]
Except, of course, for the fact that none of that exists. But I wouldn't expect that a little fact like that would change anything for the type of person that you are.
Sure, it's called being an accessory to the crime. Alas, I will be a direct participant, just not in the first wave. I'll buy mine when I replace my aging TV.
And I'll probably run folding@home for the hell of it too.
Spoken like a true ignorant American who doesn't know shit about the rest of the world, or, indeed, about the politics of the United States itself.
The entire planet opposed us for a reason, or rather, many reasons. Even the countries that "supported" us, did so against the wishes of the majority of their respective populations, and only to win our favor.
Just look at the disaster we've created in Iraq. All we've done is destroy infrastructure, further damaging the quality of life of Iraqis, and even worse, removed the keystone preventing civil war -- yes, Saddam Hussein and his government, our former ally. Oh... and built an oil pipeline...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden