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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.
Nice news. I'm sure Sony will make lots of PR capital out of this ala the subject ;)
Will this run on PS3 Linux or natively on the regular OS?
That's like... 10,000,000,000,000,000 instances of taxpayers dollars being wasted! How many more times does this have to flop before it's canceled?
Imagine what would happen if they could also harness Diebold's flops...
Donate free food here
x86 continues to get left in the computational dust.
I have a friend who is a very senior engineer at NVidia who has talked about how sick and tired they are of having the boat anchor that is x86 tied to their hardware. And that they would love to just cut out Intel and just run Windows/Linux right on their hardware. Microsoft obviously felt the same way when they dumped Intel and switch to PowerPC with the 360.
The PS3 is supposed to completely support keyboard and mouse, have a full version of Linux sitting on the harddrive, and support homebrew development. If you can download and install normal Linux apps...a graphics programmer dream come true. Even cooler are the plans of Sony coming out with higher end PS3 models with more RAM or Cell chips. A Linux box with a couple gigs of RAM and dual or quad Cells, oh baby.
You are so right! Don't you just hate how these manufactures show up at owners houses and put a gun to their heads and force them to run computationally expensive apps on their hardware!
Ohhhh!!! Makes me sooooo mad!!!! Someone mod me up!!!
Oh wait, they don't...
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.
There aren't much details on the ATI version. I'm guessing there's no Nvidia version yet because of the lack of IEEE 854 compliance in viedo cards, so they'd have to create a special version for each video card. But it's pretty neat what you can do with video cards these days besides play video games.
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
The Broadband Engine in the PS3 has roughly 210 Gflops of power at 3.2Ghz. That is around an order of magnitude more than most people's current Intel desktop PCs. Although that isn't really the full story since it is the memory architecture that makes Cell chips so much more powerful than Intel chips, but that is a whole other, very cool, subject. If even a small percentage of the 100+ million PS3s Sony will sell over the next five years are added to computation pool, the results will be staggering.
That's why you should run it in during winter; saves (somewhat) on the heating bill.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Not as silly as if the $300 donated to cancer research was caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research to prevent cancer caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research caused by the $300 worth of coal that you burnt in order to pay for the $300 donated to cancer research.
:)
I HATE SILLY LOOPS
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
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.
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.
"SETI pioneered the idea" ???
http://www.distributed.net/ was doing it long befor seti@home
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Full disclosure: I work on both of those projects.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
I would assume whoever wants the massive computation is willing to pay a notable amount to anyone who allows their PS3 to be hooked up to it for a signficant time per month. Perhaps Sony could remind people of the money they "get back" after the high price?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
when little Jonny's monther made him turn off his game and come upstairs for dinner.
Oh well.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Some provinces/states use what they call a "smart meter" to charge for electricity. Those meters not only record how much electricity you used, but when you used it. They can then charge more for using power during peak hours (11am to 5pm) than for using the same amount of power during off-peak hours (10pm to 7am). That is an attempt to encourage people to use less power during peak hours (therefore reducing the peak and everything it involves on the power grid).
Ref: See Toronto Hydro
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Now you can use it for both!
"I forgot my mantra."
No, the cost of the computing cycles is worth more than the money to pure research. It may not be efficient, but the cost (both dollar and environmental) to buy/manufacture the processors and run them would be far greater than just running existing processors. Yes, there's the inherent inefficiency of distributed computing, but there is also sever inefficency in the process of donating, adminstrating, allocating, purchasing, monitoring, and replacing physical assets.
Put another way, is it cheaper to identify, buy, assemble, build, maintain, and power a computer, or is it cheaper to just power the computer, even if the power-Flop ratio might only be 1:0.5. Buildings and people are expensive when compared to energy costs.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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
For no reason other than because I'm evil, I present to everyone the following back-of-the-napkin/sources-from-wikipedia analysis:
There was an article a while back about game console power consumption, but rather than dig that up, I'll assume a PS3 will average 200 Watts while cranking away on proteins. It's a good, round number. And I'll assume that I'd spend an hour per day actually playing games. Electricity in my area costs about $0.08/kW-hr.
0.2 kW * 23 hr/day * 365 day/year = 1679 kW-hours/year
1679 kW-hr/year * $0.08/kW-hr = $134.32/year for electricity to fold imaginary proteins. Ouch.
And for those worried about C02, 1679 kW-hr is 6,044,400 kJ, which is the energy equivalent to 46 gallons of gasoline (efficiency of conversion not accounted for). Alternately, assuming your electricity comes from a natural gas (CH4 ~ 891 kJ/mol) plant operating at 40% efficiency, one year of folding on your PS3 would release 746 pounds of CO2 (plus 1220 pounds of water vapor).
Gee, aren't numbers fun? In the fight to cure cancer, you actually end up breaking the bank and destroying the planet. That sucks.
I probably really shouldn't have posted that. I'm going to give all the idealistic, penny-pinching, obsessive-compulsive, environmentalist slashdot readers a complex.