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Folding@Home Releases GPU Client

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the call-or-fold dept.

SB_SamuraiSam writes, "Today the Folding@Home Group at Stanford University released a client (download here) that allows participants to fold on their ATI 19xx series R580-core graphics cards. AnandTech reports, 'With help from ATI, the Folding@Home team has created a version of their client that can utilize ATI's X19xx GPUs with very impressive results. While we do not have the client in our hands quite yet, as it will not be released until Monday, the Folding@Home team is saying that the GPU-accelerated client is 20 to 40 times faster than their clients just using the CPU.'"

11 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Power usage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anybody got an idea of what kind of power constant full speed GPU calculations are likely to burn?

    1. Re:Power usage? by NerveGas · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't have specifics for that chip, but I would guess 100-150 watts. In both performance-per-cycle and performance-per-watt, it far outstrips using a general-purpose CPU.

      20x-40x the performance at 1x-3x the power usage is pretty good.

      steve

      --
      Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
    2. Re:Power usage? by merreborn · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can't imagine running a gpu at 100% and cpu at 100% for hours on end.

      Clearly, you're not one of the millions with an active WoW subscription.

    3. Re:Power usage? by piquadratCH · · Score: 5, Informative

      The german newsticker heise.de cites 80 watts for a X1900 card while folding.

    4. Re:Power usage? by jericho4.0 · · Score: 4, Informative
      Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory.

      See also Reversible computing.

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  2. Re:good, I think... by ThePeices · · Score: 4, Informative

    You wont damage your card. The GPU's cooling system is rated for keeping the GPU within its thermal design spec at full load, how long you run it doesnt matter as long as there is adequate ventilation. That applies to gaming too, so its not a problem. As to sppeding up its death, your card will become obsolete by the time that happens.

  3. Re:Folding@home versus Grid.org by P3NIS_CLEAVER · · Score: 5, Funny

    I agree. We should stop all science not having a direct impact on cancer until cancer is cured.

    --
    Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!

    http://financialpetition.org/
  4. Two words: closed architecture by J.R.+Random · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "With help from ATI, the Folding@Home team has created a version of their client that can utilize ATI's X19xx GPUs with very impressive results."

    And therein lies the rub. While GPU's are getting more and more like general purpose vector floating point units, they remain closed architectures, unlike CPUs. Only those that can get help from ATI (or Nvidia) need apply to this game.

    1. Re:Two words: closed architecture by flithm · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's not necessarily true. It is a relatively new field of computer science, and thus there's not all that much info out there yet. But once you understand the basic concepts of general purpose GPU programming anyone can do it.

      What's most likely is that the guys at Stanford started pushing the hardware to the limit, and in ways the driver developers might not have anticipated. Probably what they ran up against was bugs in the driver, and the help came from ATI in terms of ways to work around the bugs. Evidence backs this up from Folding@Home's GPU FAQ:

      [You must use] Catalyst driver version 6.5 or version 6.10, but not any other versions: 6.6 and 6.7 will work, but at a major performance hit; 6.8 and 6.9 will not work at all.

      Your next question might be, if that's true then why use ATI (who are known for poor driver quality)... it might simply be a matter of that's the hardware they had to test with, so that's what they needed to use.

      At any rate, it's definitely possible to get started doing GPU programming without vendor support.

      There's even some API's out there to help... The Brook C API (for doing multiprocessor programming) has a GPU version out called BrookGPU: http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/brookgpu/ind ex.html

      There's even a fairly large community of people using Nvidia's own Cg library for doing general purpose stuff.

      There's also GPUSort (source code available to look at), which is a high performance sorting example that uses the GPU to do the sorting, and it trounces the fastest CPUs: http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/GPUSORT/results.html

      And last but not least there's the GPGPU site that is a great resource for all sorts of general purpose computing the GPUs: http://www.gpgpu.org/

  5. Not really. by megaditto · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not all the power gets dissipated as heat. Some gets sent down the Internet tubes.

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
  6. Re:Am I the only idiot? by Vegeta99 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They're studying the folds of protiens. All protiens are made of chains of amino acids, but usually more than one chain, and they're folded and twisted in a precise way in order to perform their functions. Think of them as a cell's nanomachines. Some of them are so large and complicated that it takes quite a bit of CPU power to calculate how they will fold.