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Folding@home GPU2 Beta Released, Examined

Posted by Zonk on from the nice-to-give-my-console-a-hobby dept.

ThinSkin writes "Stanford has recently released an update to their Folding@home GPU-accelerated client, which includes notable upgrades such as support for more current Radeon graphics cards and even a visualizer to see what's going on. ExtremeTech takes a good look at the new Folding@home GPU2 client and interviews Director Dr. Vijay Pande about the project. To the uninitiated, Folding@home is a distributed computing project in which hundreds of thousands of PCs and PS3s devote a portion of their computing power to crunch chunks of biological data. The goal is 'to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.'"

122 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Global Warming! by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just think of all the global warming caused by all those CPU's and GPU's cranking away day and night! And all that electricity used! The horror! They are making Al Gore cry!

    (I am joking, for those of you who are humor impaired)

    1. Re:Global Warming! by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Funny

      you should start a StopGlobalWarming@Home project, where spare CPU cycles go towards global warming research.

    2. Re:Global Warming! by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Funny

      Your ideas are relevant to my interests. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

    3. Re:Global Warming! by el_gordo101 · · Score: 1

      This is built into most OSes already, read up on "Sleep Mode".

      --
      TODO: Insert witty sig
    4. Re:Global Warming! by Dr+Caleb · · Score: 4, Funny

      " . . read up on "Sleep Mode"."

      Perhaps later. Too tired now. *yawn*.

      --
      "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
    5. Re:Global Warming! by lobiusmoop · · Score: 1, Funny

      That's the price we way for trying to see God's face. We're building a modern-day Tower of Babel with our tech in our quest for the singularity.

      --
      "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
    6. Re:Global Warming! by ArcherB · · Score: 2, Funny

      This is built into most OSes already, read up on "Sleep Mode". That's great, but Folding@Home doesn't work too well when the machine is asleep.

      --
      There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
    7. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You shouldn't be joking.

      Folding @ Home on a PS3 costs the average participant around $150-200 year in electricity if they run it 24x7. Up to $400+ in places where electricity is more expensive. PCs average less, but only because so many of them are lower power, while all PS3s are high wattage.

      I think its a worthwhile project, but the electricity people are donating isn't free and F@H uses a lot more electricity than most people think. "Oh, I've got my PC on anyway", or "Oh it can't be as much as my fridge." both of which are mistaken, your fridge uses a fraction of what a PS3 running F@H does, and even if your PC is on, running at idle or going to sleep uses a LOT less power than maxxing out the cpu and/or gpu 24x7.

      A PS3 running @ 280W 24x7 for a year:

      280W x 24h/d x 365d/y = 2452800 Watt-hours/year or 2452 kWh/y

      at $@.12/kWh that'll cost you: $294.00 / year

      Then multiply that by the number of PC's running it... it adds up fast.

      Like I said, its a good program and a good cause, BUT its not free. A kid/teen shouldn't be running it without a parents permission and understanding of the cost.

      I don't like the F@H 'propaganda' because I think its somewhat deceptive about the costs. Its relying on peoples attitude that their free cpu time is truly free to prevent them thinking about the real costs. If you probe they don't lie about the costs, but ethically they really should be more upfront about them.

      And now that there is money involved, I should choose the best use of it. When I'm faced with a decision of choosing the best place to donate $300 I think their are other causes more worthy of my money than F@H. But that's a personal choice. If you want to donate to F@H, by all means do so.

      One final issue - generally when you donate more than $10-20 to charity you get a tax receipt. $150-500 quite a bit more than $10.

    8. Re:Global Warming! by boombaard · · Score: 2, Insightful

      hm.. this way you're directly investing in 'new' science, and you know what the goal is.. if you invest in amnesty/OxFam/whatever you know at least 20% is lost due to "overhead", another 10% at least is lost due to corruption, and even then (in the case of oxfam and related charities), there is a chance you're funding an organization that has more than a few members (statistically speaking, based on the amount of cases that have come out over the past 5 years or so) that indulge in sex-for-food programmes while they're doing their work. (That said, i do donate to Oxfam, because there just isn't an alternative i know that i know is better, and i'm hoping they're doing at least something with it that can be called useful.

      Anyway, it is of course up to you (and i'll admit i'm somewhat cynical when it comes to those organizations), but if i had to choose, and if i had a choice, i'd rather invest in an @home project.. i find it a lot more intrinsically motivating than knowing i'm keeping a statistic alive that in 10-20 years might start earning their country some money through taxation because he's had his K-6 education.

    9. Re:Global Warming! by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My tongue was only half in my cheek. I stopped running any and all distributed clients a couple of years ago precisely because of the resultant power/CPU utilization. I didn't do it for the environment though as I alluded to in my joke. I did it to save money on my electrical bill.

    10. Re:Global Warming! by SecondHand · · Score: 4, Informative

      It seems that the PS3 40 GB consumes only half of what you said (135 Watts, see http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/30/40gb-ps3-features-65nm-chips-lower-power-consumption/).

      So you can go and buy a second PS3.

    11. Re:Global Warming! by Orange+Crush · · Score: 1

      That's the price we way for trying to see God's face. We're building a modern-day Tower of Babel with our tech in our quest for the singularity.

      Perhaps this machine could assist in our efforts to run through all possible permutations to discover the true name of God. . .

    12. Re:Global Warming! by cibyr · · Score: 1

      You joke, but two years ago I kept my college room warm by running distributed climate prediction on all my boxes.

      --
      It's not exactly rocket surgery.
    13. Re:Global Warming! by dstates · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course there are also all of those Flash ads that continue to run even when the browser tab that they are on is not visible. They continue to consume CPU and electricity so they are also adding to your power bill. You think I am joking, but if you are like me, you may have a dozen tabs open at any given time and each of those pages may have several active graphics items on them. Adds up.

      Good reason to run FireFox and AdBlock or FlashBlock. Even better, turn your PC off when you are not using it.

      I was cleaning the basement and found an old copy of the New York Times. Still readable after a decade in storage and I didn't recharge it once. Amazing battery life :)

      --
      Statesman
    14. Re:Global Warming! by Hucko · · Score: 2, Funny

      slow update though....

      --
      Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
    15. Re:Global Warming! by evanbd · · Score: 1

      One final issue - generally when you donate more than $10-20 to charity you get a tax receipt. $150-500 quite a bit more than $10.

      The last time I donated to charity (clothing, not money), I got a receipt that said I had donated, but not how much -- I was responsible for filling in the details and providing any documentation of value I needed. If that's acceptable for Good Will, etc,., it should work for Folding@Home. They don't need to come up with a dollar figure, you can do that. They already tell you how many work units you did, right? Accounting for the electricity cost is your problem, but they should provide the details of who you donated it to that is needed for tax purposes.

    16. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Thanks! You are right.

      There was information when the PS3/F@H launched that consumption was 280-300W, but apparently that was actually around 200-220W so my post above was out by ~$70, and now with the newer lower wattage PS3s the price comes down even more.

      But even at 135W, assuming the same .12c kWh I used in my original post that's ~$150/year. Maybe not a big deal to some, but how many would still sign up if they had to pay $150 to f@h directly instead of having it nickle and dime them daily on their power bill? I suspect the user count would be orders of magnitude lower.

    17. Re:Global Warming! by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not really, it does more FLOPS but it generates less usable scientific data which is reflected in the PPD it gets, the SMP client (multiprocessor) is the client that gives them the most research value and thus is worth the most currently. Also, the GPU clients blow the PS3 out of the water in terms of FLOPS, and that was just when the x1900xtx was the top ATI folding compatible card. The R600 series GPUs have 320 stream processors and a ridiculous amount of floating point horsepower. So, you either haven't seen many PCs or you're just talking out of your ass, or a PS3 fanboy. Either way, you don't know what you're talking about. But then, you're an anonymous coward so that's to be expected.

      --
      All your base are belong to Wii.
    18. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Accounting for the electricity cost is your problem, but they should provide the details of who you donated it to that is needed for tax purposes.

      They would need to be registered charity though, for taxes. You can't just say you donated money to X and call it a day.

    19. Re:Global Warming! by evanbd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They're a university. I'm sure they have that taken care of.

    20. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      hm.. this way you're directly investing in 'new' science, and you know what the goal is..

      Fair enough. But its a little dishonest if you don't REALIZE how much you are invested. That's my biggest issue. Once people know what it costs I have no issue if they're still willing to contribute. But it bugs me, especially since I beleive the a very significant proportion of the people contributing to F@H are not the one's paying the bills.

      The other part is how much do F@H results actually cost, in aggregate? Is it good value for the science produced? They've consumed between $50 and 100 million in electricity. Could they have made better progress towards their goals if they were given the money directly? At the very least if they built their own super computer and managed the costs directly the waste would be far far less.

      Not only would they be paying industrial rates for electricity instead of residential rates, they'd also be using far less of it because they'd have racks of CPUs not all powering hard drives, and what not needlessly.

      Hell, just take a look at the from their site: (For the purposes of this I've assumed that it costs 'volunteers' on average $10 to run a cpu per month in electricty.)

      190,000 PCs generating 182 TFLOPs. 191k cpus. Total Cost ~1.9M/month. ~$10,494/TFLOP/month
        41,000 PS3 generating 1257 TFLOPs. 41k cpus. Total Cost ~0.4M/month. ~$326/TFLOP/month

      What moron would keep the PCs running?

      A final note about overhead. You lose 10-20% efficiency right off the top with F@H due to the lack a tax receipt. I can donate $250 to a registered charity at the same cost to me as buying $200 worth of electricty due to the taxes. Or conversely when you donate $200 to F@H -you- pay an extra 20-50 in taxes vs had you given the same $200 to a registered charity.

      but if i had to choose, and if i had a choice, i'd rather invest in an @home project.. i find it a lot more intrinsically motivating than knowing i'm keeping a statistic alive that in 10-20 years might start earning their country some money through taxation because he's had his K-6 education.

      Between those two I'm inclined to agree. I tend to mostly donate to small local organizations myself.

    21. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They're a university. I'm sure they have that taken care of.

      Good point.

      Be interesting to see someone try and claim it though. I wonder if the IRS would agree to its validity.

      Probably help if they provided you with a proper receipt of some sort, which they don't.
      And I don't think it'll help non-americans even if they did, unless they were registered as a chairty in other countries as well.

    22. Re:Global Warming! by evanbd · · Score: 1

      Exactly, some sort of receipt would be a good thing. But it shouldn't be very hard for them to provide enough of one, since they don't have to manage the conversion to dollars themselves.

    23. Re:Global Warming! by DRobson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You mean something like this?

    24. Re:Global Warming! by The+-e**(i*pi) · · Score: 1

      Using a power meter connected between my desktop and the wall I only use $24 per year 24/7 (well, add 50% more for air con) on my FX55 gaming computer.

      I made a page on a wiki for another site where you sell your cpu resources here:
      https://www.cpushare.com/wiki/cpushare/ElectricityCost

    25. Re:Global Warming! by pedrop357 · · Score: 1

      One nitpick-I can still use my PC while it's folding. If I sent $150 to them and didn't fold, I would still end up paying a separate amount to my power company for all the time my PC is up.

      I used to leave my PC on all the time because we used it as an MP3 server and some other trivial functions. Because of that I didn't see folding@home's additioanl load as a big deal.

      Now, if we could figure out how much more folding@home costs to run on a PC that's already up 24/7...

    26. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Of course I only participate 8 hours a day during the 5 months in which heating is needed: between 11pm and 7am (midnight to 8am when DST) electricity is at about half the price or Euro 0.05/kWh. Of course this is only about 14% of the time, but the cost becomes a very acceptable 17 euros per year (much less if you consider that it contributes to heating the house).

      And thats and extremely reasonable and well thought out approach to it. But do you really think you are representative of the average F@H contributor? :)

      BTW, I believe that your figures are for the first PS3 with the Cell chip implemented in a 90nm process, the 65nm ones need significantly less power. The 45nm ones should be on the market after the summer, still saving quite a few watts.

      Yes, your right, the numbers have come down considerably since then. I just recalc'd for the 65nm process and the price drops to around $150. (based on 135W when running F@H), and we'll see what 45nm does when its on the market.

    27. Re:Global Warming! by jasen666 · · Score: 1

      The OP already mentioned that...
      Having a PC on, but idling, certainly consumes less power than one with a maxed CPU/GPU.
      The only way to know for sure exactly how much a difference it is for you would be to stick an ampmeter on your power cable and measure it at both times.

    28. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Using a power meter connected between my desktop and the wall I only use $24 per year 24/7 (well, add 50% more for air con) on my FX55 gaming computer.

      Please show your work:

      W : Wattage of your PC running full tilt?
      P : Price of electricity in $/kwh in your area? P
      8760 : hours / year

      W x 8760 = Wh (Watt-Hours)
      Wh / 1000 = kWh (convert from Wh to kWh)
      kWh * P = Total

      I'd like to see how you get to $24. Because that would require either telling me that your "FX-55 gaming rig" is averaging ~16Watts at full load, that you pay less than 1/2 cent for a kWh of electricity, or that your PC is idle and sleeping a LOT more than you seem to think.

      My estimates put an FX-55 gaming rig going full tilt at around 180-200W, and electricity in the first world territories ranges from 5 - 35 cents, averaging around 8-11 cents. The number of hours in a year isn't really up for dispute. So I'm curious how your going to make the numbers come out without undermining your claim.

    29. Re:Global Warming! by The+-e**(i*pi) · · Score: 1

      https://www.cpushare.com/wiki/cpushare/ElectricityCost

    30. Re:Global Warming! by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 1

      They would need to provide a "receipt" showing work units contributed and what platform contributed it. You would then fill in the electricity cost in your area, and compute the "in kind" donation. All of this is moot though unless they're a 501(c)(3) charity.

    31. Re:Global Warming! by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 1

      A damn fine short story I may add. +1 for your reference to it.

    32. Re:Global Warming! by The+-e**(i*pi) · · Score: 2, Informative

      https://www.cpushare.com/wiki/cpushare/ElectricityCost

    33. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 1

      That's interesting, but one has to wonder why one would have a PC that idles at 150W on at night in the first place unless it was doing something remotely useful? My units go to sleep, which is MUCH lower wattage than merely being idle.

      There are legit reasons to have a machine 'on' all the time, but most of them should go to sleep or even hibernate, if not just get turned right off.

    34. Re:Global Warming! by The+-e**(i*pi) · · Score: 1

      Free power for one :P
      bittorrent for another
      lack of patience in the morning is another
      falling asleep while "just laying down for a few minutes" is yet another (engineering student)

    35. Re:Global Warming! by afidel · · Score: 1

      I don't know, your numbers are pretty pessimistic. The audited numbers for my local food bank are 6% administrative overhead and 3% fundraising. From the numbers I've seen online that's pretty typical for US foodbanks.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    36. Re:Global Warming! by religious+freak · · Score: 1

      First time I've read it, I must admit -- there's nothing quite like classic Clarke. Certainly, +1 if I had the mod points!

      --
      If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
    37. Re:Global Warming! by religious+freak · · Score: 1

      I highly doubt the validity of the figures you quote for folding @ home's cost. This has been a perennial topic on /.

      But even if you were right, I'd say one cannot (for example) complain about the government not funding NASA and at the same time not run Folding @ home for economical reasons. Both are great science and both are worthy of (at least) a modest amount of investment.

      --
      If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
    38. Re:Global Warming! by vux984 · · Score: 1

      I highly doubt the validity of the figures you quote for folding @ home's cost. This has been a perennial topic on /.

      You are right. My figures were off. The PS3 watt rating for the 90nm version is 190-220 not 280. The 65nm version is more efficient at around 157.

      That brings the cost down to $188 and $137 respectively. But it bears mentioning that the .12c price I quoted was on the low end. It ranges from ~.05 to ~.24 in the US. In a state like new york its .17 so even with the corrected numbers its $356 and $264 for the 2 different PS3 cpus. People need to assess their own situation.

      But even if you were right, I'd say one cannot (for example) complain about the government not funding NASA and at the same time not run Folding @ home for economical reasons. Both are great science and both are worthy of (at least) a modest amount of investment.

      I don't object at all to people funding F@H. I object to people not KNOWING they are funding it, and to what extent. I object to employees installing it at work and passing the bill to their employer, to teens installing it on their computers and passing the bill to an unsuspecting parents who have little ability to really see a problem with a utility bill. Its not like a phone bill where you can see if you kids are burning out your wallet.

      Not even worthwhile science should be funded like that.

    39. Re:Global Warming! by Random+Destruction · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless its winter. In that case 100% of the energy going into your computer is going towards heating your house. Sure electricity is more expensive than gas, but it'll drastically change your numbers for winter months.

      --
      :x
    40. Re:Global Warming! by itof500 · · Score: 1

      www.climateprediction.net

    41. Re:Global Warming! by religious+freak · · Score: 1

      I object to people not KNOWING they are funding it, and to what extent. I can see your point there. Fair enough
      --
      If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
    42. Re:Global Warming! by Hoi+Polloi · · Score: 1

      It is "Steve"

      --
      It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
    43. Re:Global Warming! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Also don't forget to turn off the feature that allows you to sync with your PSP (well unless, of course, you have a PSP and use it :\) it runs i believe at th every least an extra 10 knh (I want to say perhaps 20[?] but i risk sounding like a jackass and more importantly, being wrong). This feature will draw power when you have the PS3 powered down so short of flipping the switch in the back, you will be blowing money for no reason at all.

      I thinks called auto-play or something, anyway check to see if you have it on, I have known a number of people who had it on and dont even own a PSP. lawl.

  2. I do the laundry once a week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been doing Folding @ Home for most of my adult life. I fold shirts, pants, underwear, etc. etc.

    1. Re:I do the laundry once a week by cpricejones · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can also visualize protein folding at home by going to www.pdb.org. The Protein Data Bank website has lots of cool structures to download, from small proteins up to large RNA-protein complexes like the ribosome (http://www.pdb.org/pdb/explore.do?structureId=2J00), which is one of the more remarkable achievements in structural biology. (Note that you may need a stronger graphics card to actually look at and rotate the whole ribosome as it is 64,000 atoms.) To actually look at these structures, you can use a program like PyMOL (http://pymol.sourceforge.net/).

    2. Re:I do the laundry once a week by philspear · · Score: 1

      The Protein Data Bank website has lots of cool structures to download, from small proteins up to large RNA-protein complexes like the ribosome
      ... and to the non-structural biologist, they'll all look like chewed gum or modern art (depending on which modeling system you pick.)
    3. Re:I do the laundry once a week by Drengur · · Score: 1

      You mean your mom stopped doing it for you when you moved down to the basement?

  3. visualization by sveard · · Score: 1

    Why visualize it? It's boring, and doesn't it use precious CPU/GPU power?

  4. Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by Grokmoo · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From the article:

    ET: Whenever someone hears about GPU-accelerated FAH, their first question is why there is no client with support for Nvidia cards. In the past it was said that it had more to do with Nvidia's drivers. Now that the core doesn't use DirectX, couldn't a GPU client use Nvidia's CUDA? Is there any work going on there, and if not, why not? Dr. Pande: We are interested in CUDA and are investigating how well FAH on CUDA would work. I am awaiting this with some serious excitement. Getting Folding@home working on Nvidia GPUs would definitely add a lot of computing power into the mix. This is especially true now, as it seems that the current crop of high end GPUs seems to favor Nvidia.

    From the benchmarks I have seen, it seems that there are currently no games that can effectively utilize, for example, 2 9800 GX2s. If Folding@home releases an Nvidia client, those people who have plunked $1000 into graphics cards may finally be able to put them to use!
    1. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by bryce4president · · Score: 1

      Heck, I only have a 6800, but it sits idle except for a couple hours a day at home. I'd be willing to let it chug away. Bring on the Nvidia support.

    2. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by Vampyre_Dark · · Score: 1

      Don't hold your breathe for it to work on an intel GPU. The only thing that will fold is you!

    3. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by magarity · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The first thought that comes to mind is whether the 8xxx and newer with the stream processors would need a completely different programming approach compared to the prior models. This being /., who wants to be first to pretend to know the answer?

    4. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by dvice_null · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes

    5. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by dvice_null · · Score: 4, Funny

      No

    6. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by LotsOfPhil · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here is a post from the Nvidia/CUDA forums from Mike Houston, one of the Folding at Home people: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=28868&view=findpost&p=224490

      --
      This post climbed Mt. Washington.
    7. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by pipatron · · Score: 1

      None of the above.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
    8. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by somersault · · Score: 1

      In soviet russia-oh damnit I'm too late

      --
      which is totally what she said
    9. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by somersault · · Score: 1

      'S quantum that is.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    10. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by VPeric · · Score: 1

      Sadly enough, CUDA only works with the 8xxx series.

    11. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by BrentH · · Score: 1

      In Soviet Russia, you fold!

    12. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by billcopc · · Score: 1

      Ditto. Hardcore gamers tend to go with NVidia, simply because they still market "extreme" cards while ATI is quite content as the on-again/off-again king of mid-range. There's a *ton* of Geforce 6/7/8 cards that could be put to good use with FAH, coupled with some pretty scary overclocked machines.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    13. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by cpricejones · · Score: 2, Funny

      I cant wait!

    14. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by cpricejones · · Score: 2, Funny

      Aw shucks

    15. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by philspear · · Score: 1

      Heck, I live in America, and I do all my own protein folding.

    16. Re:Support for NVIDIA GPUs coming? by cheier · · Score: 1

      The problem with the current Folding@Home implementation is that it is comprised of about 50k lines of Brook+ code. While ideal for ATI boards because their compute abstraction layer (CAL) is implemented using Brook+, this makes it a bit difficult for porting to NVIDIA.

      From what I've been hearing, while the purpose of CAL and CUDA are the same, the development environments are different enough to require the FAH guys to do a much more rigorous and in depth code modification in order to properly support CUDA. While I believe they are working on it, they are most likely stumbling upon some non-trivial roadblocks along the way.

      One could only wish at this point that Rapidmind just abstract CAL and CUDA in their software... then you can support ATI and NVIDIA out of the box.

  5. Ati Only by Fross · · Score: 3, Informative

    From TFA, interestingly this bypasses DirectX and interfaces with the card directly (I guess you'd want to, to throw maths at it instead of vertices)

    However it only runs on R600-based Ati cards right now. It also requires .Net framework. They do say they're "investigating" an nVidia version, but that sounds a while away.

    Interestingly also, it claims to parallelize processing the atoms, so it must use the individual stream processors on the graphics card directly.

    1. Re:Ati Only by Trogre · · Score: 1

      ... so no Linux version for a while then? A pity, since the OSS radeon driver has really improved in the past couple of years.

      I guess my cluster will sit there with just its CPUs crunching numbers and its GPUs idle for a while longer.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  6. Crude statement by relikx · · Score: 2, Funny

    So let me get this straight, you keep your computer running for long periods of time. The goal is "to understand protein...misfolding"

    Sounds like Pornography@home to me...

  7. Doing this at work? by iamhigh · · Score: 1

    What about folding@work? I have access to 150 computers, most of which stay on 24/5, and do nothing 16/5 (okay, maybe 20/5).

    I, of course, would have to get the okay to do this, but I am not even sure I would want to...

    Has anyone done this? How did you go about it? What concerns are there (security, reliability)?

    --
    No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
    1. Re:Doing this at work? by Gewalt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Better check up on power consumption there, factor in 124 hours a week at 240 watts (conservative) x150 machines. Take a look at how much money your company is "donating" in raw power consumption, then triple it, cause for every watt of heat dissipated, it takes 2 watts of AC to remove it. See if your CEO approves of that donation to FAH that he can't even write off for tax purposes. (no receipt)

      --
      Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
    2. Re:Doing this at work? by scubamage · · Score: 1

      At my high school all computers had folding@home installed. Usually there is little strife from layer-8 types because the machines aren't doing anything during that time anyways, and a decent marketing department can spin it as some awesome PR. At the very least if you have install rights on your machine you can run the client on your workstation.

    3. Re:Doing this at work? by iamhigh · · Score: 1

      you should check out the Kill a Watt. It tells you just how much power something draws.

      Just because you have a 240 watt PS, doesn't mean you pull 240 constantly. In fact with drives and monitors off, you might be pulling 75. At least for most of our common computers.

      I am environmentally aware, but I did the calculation and 16 hours of a computer running is less than 5 minutes of a $40,000 PHB's time. So the attempt to enforce the policy of shutting down computers nightly doesn't add up to the execs.

      --
      No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
    4. Re:Doing this at work? by iamhigh · · Score: 1

      I re-read your comment... I was way off on what you were saying. Sorry for that.

      So is the program that intensive? Will it really pull that much power?

      --
      No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
    5. Re:Doing this at work? by Gewalt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's a HUGE difference between an idle computers power consumption and ones whose CPU and RAM throughput are being taxed to the limit by a process like folding. The 240 watts I mentioned is just the CPU, northbridge, RAM, and internal heat evacuation. Drives and monitor are completely irrelevant.

      You execs are right to dismiss the notion of shutting down a computer thats idle. It's NOT consuming much. However, when that same computer is crunching foldings numbers for it.... THAT is a huge cost.

      --
      Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
    6. Re:Doing this at work? by Klinky · · Score: 1

      I don't know what computer you're running, but my Core2 running @ 2Ghz(speedstep) idles around 134W. When I run my 8800GT full bore and my CPU ramps to 3Ghz I suck up about 212W. I would find it surprising if your commodity office PC used more than 100watts @ %100 CPU. The gap between idle & full speed probably isn't that much either as a lot of computers are not setup to use SpeedStep or Cool N' Quiet by default.

    7. Re:Doing this at work? by Gewalt · · Score: 1

      2.8ghz desktop P4 uses 130w at 100% and ~20w at 1%. Although the C2D is rapidly replacing P4s, there are still quite a few of them in the workplace. The earlier P4s actually consumed more power, and Rambus ram consumed about 3x the power as "regular" ram.

      BTW- you have a terribly inefficient computer if its sucking down 134w when idle... typical of an office computer is around 65w. Unless of course, you're talking about a gaming machine... (just realized the vid card you ref'd... d'oh!)

      --
      Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
    8. Re:Doing this at work? by kdkirmse · · Score: 1

      I believe you have your ratio wrong. Modern AC units will move at least 3W of heat using 1W of power.

    9. Re:Doing this at work? by somersault · · Score: 1

      I used it to test out a new server once just to make sure it was stable, after having crashing/network card issues during installation of Windows. Being the IT manager (okay, so the only IT staffer, hehe) I didn't really need to get the go ahead to do that though :P I agree that for that many computers, the power consumption costs really would be too many. For your own workstation it would probably be fine. I've noticed one engineer at work had his screensaver set to do climate change calculations or something along those lines.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    10. Re:Doing this at work? by specific · · Score: 1

      Luckily, I live & work from a building that includes power in the rent. 8)

      --
      If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
    11. Re:Doing this at work? by Verteiron · · Score: 1

      An interesting problem with doing this comes from an unexpected source: noise. Most of the PCs I've set up here have fans that spin faster the warmer the machine gets. When the CPU is pegged at 100% for more than about 5 minutes, the workstation sounds like a Harrier lifting off. Now imagine an entire building full of these...

      --
      End of lesson. You may press the button.
    12. Re:Doing this at work? by andy_t_roo · · Score: 1

      will you manage to obtain orbit? - the thrust of 500 harriers could manage that with a small payload. (assuming 500 computers per building)

    13. Re:Doing this at work? by RicktheBrick · · Score: 1

      Just go to the statistic pages on WorldCommunityGrid.org. You will see that the top 4 contributors have over 5 million results. A thousand results per cpu year is a good rule of thumb so 5 million results is about 5000 cpu years. At $300 per cpu year that amounts to 1.5 million dollars so there are large corporations that are willing to donate that much time and effort.

    14. Re:Doing this at work? by rm-ce · · Score: 1

      I second this. The aircon sitting next to my room has a cooling capacity of 6.4kW, while consuming 2.4kW. I'm not saying its ultra reliable, but quick google reveals joule.bu.edu/~hazen/LinuxCluster/actut.pdf, stating: Old inefficient aircons -> performance factor of 1 (1W to remove 1W) Average modern aircons -> performance factor of 2 (1W to remove 2W) Efficient modern aircons -> performance factor of 3 (1W to remove 3W) Whereas what you're saying, 2W to remove 1W, would be a performance factor of 0.5...

    15. Re:Doing this at work? by Capitalist+Tool · · Score: 1

      Hello Gewalt, Your power estimates are overstated. Known F@h power consumption (measured at wall): Normal client- around 45 watts above idle.__ GPU2 client- 3870 adds around 70 watts- total includes CPU/system draw as 1 CPU core feeds the 3870- producing >100 GFLOPS analysis.__ SMP client- dedicated rigs w/minimal peripherals using OC'd Q6600 use 110 watts (and are very fast).__ PS3 clients- use 180-200 watts while folding @ rate > 85 GFLOPS.__ Individual machines will vary, of course.__ Estimates are that F@h uses 18-25 Mwatts avg, and is currently crunching at 1.6+ PFLOPS. Not too shabby.__ Regards,

    16. Re:Doing this at work? by Capitalist+Tool · · Score: 1

      Hello iamhigh, Thousands of businesses/schools/organizations are already participating in the FAH project. May I suggest you visit the folding forum where your questions can be viewed and answered by knowledgeable F@h donors. http://foldingforum.org/ Here's the project's main page: http://folding.stanford.edu/ Regards,

    17. Re:Doing this at work? by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Sorry? 2 Watts to remove every watt of heat? Surely your A/C units can do better than a COP of 0.5

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  8. Printer friendly link by computernut · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=226537,00.asp

  9. Translation of "protein folding related diseases." by denis-The-menace · · Score: 2, Informative

    "to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases."

    FYI: This means Prions related diseases => Mad cow disease

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
  10. Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by Viking+Coder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, here's my thought - before someone sends an email, they contact Folding@Home, identify themselves, say who they want to send an email to, and the contents of the email. F@H gives them a work unit. When they complete it, F@H signs their email. Your email client can filter emails based on how many work units the sender did to send it to you. If someone really wants your attention, they'll process for a day or two. If it's a casual email, one work unit will do. Maybe even a fraction of a work unit.

    That way, if you read spam, at least you know that you contributed to F@H. If you want less spam, you turn up your threshold for how many work units the sender has to do.

    --
    Education is the silver bullet.
    1. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by somersault · · Score: 1

      Uh. I think I'd rather use the phone. And that's really saying something. Usually when someone needs my attention, they need it very soon.. talking about work situations here of course, for personal email your method would be crap to middling.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    2. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by evanbd · · Score: 1

      All the joys of hashcash, with none of the headaches of writing a cross-platform solution! And there's a third party involved, too!

    3. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by ascendant · · Score: 1

      If someone really wants your attention, they'll process for a day or two. If it's a casual email, one work unit will do. Maybe even a fraction of a work unit. In almost all cases, it would take days. Most WUs take days to complete anyway.
      Just find the list of WUs they have, and divide the number of points it is worth by 110. That is the number of days it takes to complete on an average computer.
      --
      Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
    4. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by Viking+Coder · · Score: 2, Informative

      The stupid part about hashcash is that no useful work is done. I'm proposing an idea that would at the very least get something useful accomplished.

      There are all sorts of third parties involved in sending email. I'm not proposing a solution for everyone - I'm suggesting one possibility.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
    5. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      So make it fractional, and allow people to build credit. Have F@H give out credits at about the rate of about 60 per hour of work against a Work Unit. The entire concept, duh, is that you trust people you know, and you demand credit from people you don't know. If that doesn't work for at least 50% of your work and 95% of your personal email, then you don't trust many people... So ask for more credits before you'll unfilter spam.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
    6. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by religious+freak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, because Lord knows the spammers don't have spare CPU capacity at hand on all the hijacked machines they control.

      It's worth a shot at thinking outside the box, but they have the CPU cycles and can likely hack past any kind of attempt to node lock the work units.

      I suppose a minor benefit would be that some kind of work gets done before a spam message was sent out, but there's got to be a way to get past that requirement -- F@H is based on a measure of trust (and some cross-validation) that participants aren't gaming the system. With the email plan, the incentive is to offer incorrect results quickly, rather that accurate results slowly.

      But like I said, at least it was a try at a different approach.

      --
      If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
    7. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      Most WUs take days ... I'm not seeing the downside here. Even if it's just a way to get a single email through to someone and maybe get onto their whitelist. However, those spam botnets have a lot of CPU power at their disposal too. It would stop spam for a week and then we'd be stuck with it.
      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    8. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by somersault · · Score: 1

      Limping along with the current system of email is just a bad idea anyway, it needs to be secure from the ground up, not just tagged on after. Spammers can generate a whole lot of credit with a botnet as well, so the only person that gets inconvenienced here are those that are trying to send legitimate mails. They also have to contribute processor time and energy to a cause that they might not be wanting to support (if they contribute to another charity or whatever)..

      --
      which is totally what she said
    9. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by ascendant · · Score: 1

      However, those spam botnets have a lot of CPU power at their disposal too. I'm not seeing a downside here. All those spam botnets will be running Folding@Home. The cure for all sorts of diseases that need nearly limitless computer power to solve. And on top of that, we'll apparently have no spam for a week!
      --
      Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
    10. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      So, you increase the amount of cross-validation. I kind of fail to see the problem here. At the very least, you're contributing to F@H. That's a good thing.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
    11. Re:Idea: F@H to help filter spam? by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      So, allow multiple crediting agencies. The same way I can pick a Star Wars stamp at the Post Office.

      If they've got a botnet, and I can force them to use it to help F@H, I see that as a good thing.

      And as I said in another post, if someone sends a legitimate email, I think it makes sense that you could return their credit when you say, "Ah yes, this isn't spam."

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
  11. Re:Translation of "protein folding related disease by bradbury · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Actually this is a grossly incomplete statement. Due to the fact that the process of Non-homologous End Joining (NHEJ) repair of DNA double strand breaks involves the exonuclease (DNA end-eating) proteins WRN and DCLRE1C (Artemis), the repair of double strand breaks corrupts the genome via microdeletions. Microdeletions can result in frameshift mutations which can of course result in protein mis-folding. The accumulation of these frameshift mutations and misfolded proteins over the lifespan of cells has downstream consequences including less efficient or improper cell function (cancer or aging) as well as the induction of apoptosis (managed cell death) -- more aging.

    Thus the fundamental processes which will terminate most of our lives are related to mis-folded proteins. It is not limited to the less common "mad cow disease" (which few humans need to worry about) or even Alzheimer's (which more humans should be worried about as research funding is failing to keep pace with either inflation or the growth rate in people afflicted with the disease) [1].

    (If any of these concepts are unfamiliar, the wikipedia discussions of the topics are not too bad.)

    1. One could get into a long discussion as to whether or not to consider Alzheimer's a protein folding disease. I happen to be of the opinion that any disease involving the accumulation of molecules that are not present in "normal" cells is leaning in that direction.

  12. Re:Twofo Goatse by somersault · · Score: 1

    /. now warns of redirects/links!? Awesome. Someone needs to combine goatse with rickrolling.. mmmmm...

    --
    which is totally what she said
  13. What about AI? by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    How about we just use this huge processing network to emulate actual neurons and link them together as close to a brain as we can. Then we can see what happens..

    i know it takes billions of neurons to do anything, but with all this extra power laying around we might just have enough to do it.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    1. Re:What about AI? by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 1

      Remind me to not to hire you as my brain scientist.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  14. Re:no directX ? by somersault · · Score: 1

    Do I see several Amiga fans' eyes glowing in the murky gloom? :)

    I guess they will still be using drivers for the cards though, even if they are not using DirectX? But this is closer to bashing right on the hardware =p if cards were all made to conform to a certain set of intructions (presumably along the lines of how all x86 processors have the same basic instructions?), we'd be able to eliminate the need for drivers there :p Old systems could use the new cards by having a driver for the new instruction set. Not that today's cards are slow or anything, but it would be nice to get rid of parts of the OS that aren't really necessary if you do the hardware interfaces right.. :p

    --
    which is totally what she said
  15. Not "examined" by SETIGuy · · Score: 1

    It doesn't count as "examined" until we can see the source.

    --
    Support SETI@home
  16. Your math is WAY off. by Frangible · · Score: 1, Interesting

    FYI:

    Old PS3s (90nm):
    Folding@Home with visuals: 215 watts.
    Folding@Home screen saver: 185 watts.

    New PS3s (65nm):
    Running Folding @ home 157

    Considering the GPU is still 90nm, that 157 figure should drop to ~127 watts when the screen saver kicks in.

    Typical energy costs are also more like $.10/kWh.

    127W x 24h/d x 365d/y = 1112520 Watt-hours/y or 1113 kWh/y
    at $.10/kWh that actually costs moar like: $111/y.
    Or if for some reason you're paying $12/kWh, that's still only $134, less than half of your estimate.

    Please stop spreading FUD about F@H and inflating the costs by more than a factor of two. It's important science that benefits everyone and the PS3 is actually very power efficient -- drawing less energy with F@H than your desktop 3D card does idle doing nothing.

    If you don't want to participate in F@H and help science and humanity, that's your choice, but at least post the correct data to support your argument.

    I really hope no one got dissuaded by the bad data in your argument into not running F@H when they might've contributed a key bit of research important for understanding drug candidates for P53 cancer suppression or Alzheimer's disease treatments. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but arguing against F@H makes me a sad panda.

    Unless of course you're a highly developed tumor who figured out how to post on Slashdot and fear F@H as a matter of self-preservation, which I could hardly blame you for.

    KEEP FOLDING!

    1. Re:Your math is WAY off. by Frangible · · Score: 1
      update: I just measured my 65nm PS3 with a watt meter. Results:

      F@H with visuals (map + protein thumbnail): 148 watts
      F@H with screensaver: 131 watts

      Oddly the screensaver did not drop it by the same number of watts despite the fact the GPU is the same die size as on older PS3s; in fact, it was only 57% the decrease experienced on the 90nm PS3. I am uncertain as to why this may be.

      Regardless, 131 watts is still only ~$120/year for me, and that's certainly manageable for the sheer amount of work and folding the PS3 is doing. I probably wouldn't want to pay for an older Pentium 4 box guzzling 2-3x the PS3's power consumption for several orders of magnitude less work, though.

    2. Re:Your math is WAY off. by vux984 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Your right I was off on the original data, by about $70 bucks, because I grabbed the wrong number. Early reports on ps3 f@h rated it at 280-300W, but this was corrected down to 190-220W thereafter. My mistake there and I've posted that I was wrong already elsewhere in this thread.

      As for the price of electricity, and your assertion that its 10c? vs 12c? Now were just playing statistics. I could justify mine by noting that prices are generally higher in Europe and Japan for electricity. (Its the equivalent of 25c in Japan IIRC, for example.) Or I could point out that the electricity is higher in the states where the population density is higher... so even if the average rate if you look at it by state is .10, the average person pays more than that because they mostly live in states that are higher. New York and California are both markedly above than 10c 50% and 70% higher, respectively, in fact.

      But it doesn't really matter, the cost of a kWh ranges from ~.05 to ~.30. The average is between .09-.14 depending on how you arrange the data. (Especially if you consider the places where there is ladder pricing -- where the first X is one price, and beyond that its another price... a high energy device always on can move you up the rungs of the ladder into a new rate category.)

      As for the newer PS3 being less power hungry, that's true too, and a fair comment.

      Please stop spreading FUD about F@H and inflating the costs by more than a factor of two

      Oh, so when they upgraded the PS3 to 65nm a couple million of 90nm units power consumption dropped by a factor of 2?

      I really hope no one got dissuaded by the bad data in your argument

      Me too. I hope they dp their own math for their own circumstances and hardware and make an informed decision for themselves.

      People in New York are going to find that even with my Watt numbers as off as they were, my final result for a 90m PS3 was far too LOW. (They pay .17 per kWh. so even at the correct Wattage of 215, they pay $351 for an 'old' ps3, and 256 for a new one. Making your $111 quote only 1/3rd their correct price for a 90nm unit, and less than half the price for a 65nm unit.

      If I'm spreading 'fud', what do they call it when you spread false reassurances?

      And its not just New York -- Conneticut pays .18, Hawahii .24, ... and lots of places in Europe and Japan are in that 15-25 ballpark. For all of -them- my numbers were too LOW. ... into not running F@H when they might've contributed a key bit of research important for understanding drug candidates for P53 cancer suppression or Alzheimer's disease treatments. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but arguing against F@H makes me a sad panda.

      Yeah, and when you walked past the unicef box and didn't put a quarter in you just made the difference between the next einstein living or dying. shame on you. just set mankind back a century.

      I'm not saying people should stop contributing. I'm saying people should be AWARE of what they are contributing. And while I agree that the numbers I posted should have been more 'right', and I regret that they were off, the visibility of the issue remains important.

      I support F@H's mission. I don't support them being funded largely by unsuspecting parents of teens who've essentially 'subscribed' to f@h and had the bill tacked on to mom&dad's utilities without so much as a lineitem -- or installed it on all the pcs at work thereby billing it to their employer.

      I realize f@h isn't at 'fault' for this, but they have an ethical obligation to be very upfront about what it it will cost, and maybe even perform some sort of basic validation, like requiring an address and sending a snail mail to the occupant thanking them for subscribing, and advising them of the impact. Sure it won't stop people from signing up illicitly but it would mean a lot if F@H made an effort to contribute to ensure the people it was taking money from were actually aware of it.

  17. That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Icarium · · Score: 1
    You want to filter your email based on how much people are willing to pay for the extra CPU usage required to process a F@H work unit?

    You would also be filtering your email based on how much processing power they have available? (My gaming rig can knock off about 8 work units in the time it takes my older rig to do 1, and my work PC would take twice as long again).

    And heaven forbid that someone who actually USES thier computer try and send you an important/urgent email. After all, the more processing cycles they use on anything other than F@H means less cycles sitting around for F@H to use, which means slower processing of work units.

    If someone really wants your attention, they'll process for a day or two "Hmm, I have this really important document that I need you to read and sign off on, and I need it done asap. I'll just sit here processing F@H for couple of days then..."

    I could probably think of a few more reasons why this is stupid, but if you don't get the drift by now...
    1. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, a very similar system was tried; I don't know if it's still in any sort of wide-spread use (or as wide-spread as it ever got) or not.

      Hashcash involved calculating a hash, taking up CPU time, and sticking it in the email header. The recipient could easily verify that you'd spent CPU to send this message, hence, in theory, proving that you're not a spammer.

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    2. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Icarium · · Score: 1

      Granted, a few seconds of processing time would be trivial for senders of single emails and a major hassle for a spammer who is trying to push out huge volumes (What about people/sites that send legitimate bulk emails, such as newsletters to subscribers?)

      But the suggestion here involves somewhat more than a few seconds (up to days!) of CPU time...

    3. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      One idea would be that doing F@H work could earn you credit that you could then apply to any future email you want to send. So, that takes care of your concern about urgency.

      All sorts of people filter based on the amount of work that went in to the communication. From least impressive to most impressive - send someone an email, send a fax, place a phone call, put a letter in the mail, show up in person to talk to them, have a friend of theirs say that you'd like to get in touch, put a full page ad in the New York Times. Similarly, if someone spends no credits, some credits, or a lot of credits, you could combine with all of your other filters. If something looks suspiciously like spam, but someone put in hundreds of hours of credit into it, maybe I'll be willing to give it a read.

      Maybe I as a reader could return their credit. So, someone can send me an email, and I say, "Oh yeah, that's legit - I don't need to eat up his credit." Therefore, there's less of a discrepancy between the CPU-haves and the CPU-have-nots.

      Heck, even if ONLY while I'm typing an email, I'm doing work towards F@H, that takes care of your concern about processing cycles. My computer is spending 99.999% of its time right now doing nothing, as I reply to you.

      I'd like you to think of a few more reasons why you think it's stupid, because I *always* appreciate constructive criticism. I think you've strengthened my idea, not weakened it.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
    4. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Icarium · · Score: 1

      At the end of the day you're still going to end up filtering email based on addresses/domains.

      If a family member fires off a 3 second email asking you to pick them up at the airport in 3 hours, do you ignore them?

      Do you ignore the email from your boss saying "Team meeting at 3pm"?

      Should I filter out emails sent by one of servers that tells me it's experiencing a fault? It wouldn't even have time to get a F@H process started before the email was done and dusted.

      What about any number of organisations that send out automated emails? Reminders, newsletters and other email that you've subscribed to receive but that takes thier servers a fraction of a second to generate?

      What about single emails sent out in bulk (bcc?) If I want to email everyone in my team do I need to put in 15 times the effort of a single mail? Or can I apply a single credit - and if so, what stops a spammer from doing the same?

      Your original proposal is still stupid, even if the general idea of requiring some effort is not.

      Yes, spam makes up a very large portion of all email sent. Spammers, on the other hand, do not - your idea is to inconvenience the many to discourage the few.

      Personally, I'd rather whitelist the email addresses of people and domains I trust (family, friends, work), black list any I know are spam and grey list everything else so that I can scan through it when I have time. Confusing effort with urgency/importancy makes no sense.

    5. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Icarium · · Score: 1

      Sorry for the double reply, but I forgot the most obvious flaw - what if F@H is offline and you have to work units to process? (And you can be certain that any service that performed the same function as you proposed would be target numero uno for any number of malicious attacks).

      I know for Seti@Home there were regular occurences where thier servers did not return any work units - don't know if F@H has the same problem.

    6. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      Way to miss the point.

      Of course you'd still use your whitelist and blacklist. When did I ever say anything else?

      I'm talking about unsolicited emails from addresses and domains you've never heard of before. The email saying, "Hey, I think we were in college together - and I'm going to be in town this weekend - want to get a beer?" This case is exactly where your greylist fails, because there's no way for the sender to raise the liklihood of you reading his email. My proposal would make it possible.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
    7. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      Yup, and Google and Hotmail and Yahoo and...

      Email is inherently unreliable. I'm not proposing a mechanism that everyone would have to use to send email, I'm proposing one way that people could use to increase the liklihood that their unsolicited email would be read by the receiver.

      Use your whitelist and your blacklist. For everything in between, it's a hard problem with no clear solutions, so that's why I've got a proposal.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
    8. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Icarium · · Score: 1

      I'm talking about unsolicited emails from addresses and domains you've never heard of before. You could also try clarifying points before accusing people of missing them. You may enjoy the challenge of debating or discussing a moving target, I don't.

      How do people know they're in your whitelist so that they don't waste credits (or waste time generating credits)? How do you stop people from simply spoofing the effort? How do you know if the person you're sending an email to is even using your effort based filter? How do you validate that the person sending the email actually put in the effort that they claim? If you're not using a single centralised source such as F@H, how do you make sure that the sender and the recipient are using the same metric (I'm running Seti for my credit, you're filtering on F@H - what then)?
    9. Re:That's the stupidest idea I've seen all week. by Viking+Coder · · Score: 1

      You could also try clarifying points before accusing people of missing them.

      You could also try not starting a conversation with "that's the stupidest idea I've seen all week." It makes it more enjoyable for both parties.

      You may enjoy the challenge of debating or discussing a moving target, I don't.

      Well, when I write a full specification for the system, I'll give you a call. Until then, I was posting an idea on a public forum. If you don't enjoy discussing evolving ideas, don't respond when they're posted.

      How do people know they're in your whitelist so that they don't waste credits (or waste time generating credits)?

      As I've stated, they could always attach credits. And since they're in your whitelist, you could always return them. They don't need to know if they're in your whitelist - they're willing to pay you credits, if you wish. If you're nice, you won't charge them. It could be viewed as a courtesy, though. "Oh, that's nice - he sent me 10 minutes of F@H credit."

      How do you stop people from simply spoofing the effort?

      The same mechanisms they currently use - assigning work to multiple people and validating the results. Unfortunately, you're correct that they'd probably have to increase their paranoia. Clearly, you'd need to be a "member in good standing" to acquire any credit. Maybe another criteria people would filter on would be "and how long has the sender been in good standing? Four hours? I think I'm going to filter that one out."

      Honestly, I'm just thinking this through, which is why you keep seeing me say "maybe." If my idea seems to hold up to all of your criticisms, maybe I'll flesh it out more.

      How do you know if the person you're sending an email to is even using your effort based filter?

      You don't. That's kind of like asking, "how do you know the receiver will ENJOY the postcard that I'm sending?" It's a nice picture, it makes you feel good to send it. F@H is a nice project, it makes you feel good to support it.

      How do you validate that the person sending the email actually put in the effort that they claim?

      Like I said, I was originally envisioning that F@H would sign your email, including sender and receiver. Maybe, to keep down their bandwidth, they could just sign the sender, receiver, date-time, and a hash of the contents of the email. It's very much like hashcash on the receiver's end. If the signature doesn't match the contents, you know it's no good.

      If you're not using a single centralised source such as F@H, how do you make sure that the sender and the recipient are using the same metric (I'm running Seti for my credit, you're filtering on F@H - what then)?

      This is kind of like asking if I use PGP and you use a different encryption standard... The best I can say is that the concept of signing an email is pretty well established - and the only question is the reputation of the agency signing. I respect F@H, and SETI. I'd trust either as a signator of an unsolicited email. And I think it'd be a neat idea if F@H and SETI made people process work units (or fractional parts thereof), before signing.

      The way I see it, everybody wins. It's kind of like buying an envelope that has branded on it, "American Cancer Society. All proceeds on the sale of this envelope go to cancer research." In fact, it's almost exactly like that.

      --
      Education is the silver bullet.
  18. Re:no directX ? by somersault · · Score: 1

    You don't have to, you could just have a library that maps the hardware functions to library calls.. you could call it something like VeryDirectX or something.. meh, nevermind.. :P

    --
    which is totally what she said
  19. Re:Translation of "protein folding related disease by bradbury · · Score: 1

    Regarding heart disease... If one leaves out those aspects of the disease which may be caused by specific genetic mutations the answer is no. Most heart disease is caused by poor diet, lack of exercise and an immune system which evolved under prehistoric conditions where food was not as abundant (or as fatty) and exercise was a requirement for survival.

    Heart disease is one area you can generally attribute to a genetic program not designed for the era we live in rather than specific defects (or accumulated defects) which result in protein misfolding.