Folding@Home reaches Petaflop processing power levels
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted September 23rd 2007 12:09AM
posted September 23rd 2007 12:09AM
In an achievement that is heavily weighted towards the addition of a PS3 client to the project, Folding@Home has busted through the Petaflop mark, producing a distributed supercomputer capable of above and beyond a thousand trillion flops. Currently the client stats show 1.194 Petaflops of activity, 0.93 of which is due to the PlayStation 3's contribution. Of course, Sony will likely be preparing a press release as we speak, and they've every right to. What we've got to ask is where are Microsoft and Nintendo in this equation? Sounds to us like the only specifications needed are an internet connection and a CPU, which -- last time we checked -- the Wii and 360 both have.
dude in my family we have lost 3 people to cancer, and what am saying is no one is really looking for a cure for it, when you donate money to the cancer foundations that money ends up in the hands of drug companies and instead of really finding a cure for it, they are just trying to make a better treatment for it to milk your insurance company, they don't care if you life or die and that's the sad part about it, heck we been to the moon and back, don't you think if they were really rearching cancer we woud have a cure by now
Don't be blown away by the PS3's 8 processors- it's a lot of power, but there's a lot of optimization work that has to go into it because it's such a crazy, unique architecture.
Also, don't think that 8 processors immediately blows away everything else- what they won't tell you is that the setup is one powerful processor and basically 7 weak ones.
The 360's cores are evenly balanced - 3 3.2gHz cores.
The Wii, on the other hand, is about 700 odd megahertz. Sure, that's not a lot, but everybit helps, and with as many users as the Wii has, it would be a huge help to the project.
I think it's time for the companies to tear down the competitive walls and work together.
"Also, don't think that 8 processors immediately blows away everything else- what they won't tell you is that the setup is one powerful processor and basically 7 weak ones.
The 360's cores are evenly balanced - 3 3.2gHz cores"
There's no such thing as a "weak" or "balanced" processor. It has to do with the supported instruction set. The SPEs can do everything a regular core, but they are not "shortcutted" to do it, so if you don't know what your doing with it, it will take a few more cycles to process the same data. They gave up the advanced instruction sets (which are like functions) in order to speed up floating point processing (which 3D graphics and gaming tend to use extensively.)
Actually the PS3 has one CPU, but 7 SPEs. They aren't really different processors, or cores. You can't have "unevenly" balanced cores, they will always run at the same speed.
Check Arstechnica for an explanation on why the Cell processor is so great as these vector floating point processes. It's like seven 128bit math co-processors. The 360's PowerPC G5 is no slouch either (but its unknown if they contain the Altivec engine)
General purpose chips (like the Pentium/Core Duo) have better integer performance.
Conrad's right! The 360 can do more things that just games! it should be able to use the folding@home client, toast your bread, and fry yours eggs for your breakfast at the same time!
Keep in mind the Xbox 360 also has an ATI R500 GPU, which would probably be much better for Folding@Home than its PowerPC CPUs.
ATI GPUs as of the last generation (X1600-X1900) were actually churning out twice the F@H output per card of a PS3. There's a bit of difference in the work unit measurements, but still, it's very likely the 360 can do just as well as PS3.
MS is probably more concerned about heating issues with running the GPU at full load all day. After all, the red rings issue is due to the GPU overheating...
R500 has already been trumped by the radeon 2k series and the new 8k series by nVidia. It is about the equal of the card in the PS3 despite what all of the fanboyism here is about.
The counsels are already a generation behind graphically and in general hardware-wise. That doesnt mean they are worse than PCs, they just take better advantage of all parts of the counsels where in computers they cant due to the different specifications. Unfortunately for the PS3, the only application that uses its power even remotely near its maximum is folding@home.
Gotta love those guys at stanford for coming up with such a brilliant idea to create processing power for free.
The Radeon X1k series is much better for GPGPU operations of this sort than the Geforce 7k. That's the main reason the F@H GPU client was only released for ATI cards.
Oh, and it's spelled "console" btw, not "counsel" ;)
Yeah it's odd how all that apparent power seems underutilized, and you also heard lots of stories how the CELL CPU used in the PS3 would be used in normal computers and revolutionize the world, so uhm where are they?
Perhaps we'll see them once sony sold their cell fabs as they are reportingly trying to do.
I'd actually love to have a Cell workstation, but IBM has them priced out of my range and only sells them in Blade systems. :(
Ahh, nothing like a PS3 post to bring the jeniuses out of the woodwork. I'm not a fanboy, and I don't own a next gen console, but I have been Folding for years.
The reason 360s and Wiis aren't used is because the Cell CPU in the PS3 has 7 SPEs that are ideal for massively parallel floating point tasks like folding proteins. AFIAK, the main PowerPC-style core does little but synchronize and send work to the SPEs during Folding. Thus, the PowerPC cores in the 360 and Wii would not be all that useful for folding (just as they weren't in the days of the PowerPC client for Macs).
As far as power goes, a Folding PS3 uses about 200w, which is not significantly higher than just leaving a computer on 24/7. I believe the importance of the research being done outweighs the power costs.
geee... let me point to a previous post...
h0mi @ Sep 23rd 2007 1:01AM
Think of all the electricity wasted by people leaving their ps3's on running folding at home. All that money spent on electric bills... that could be used by the folding @ home people far more effectively.
Yeah, so the Folding@Home people can buy PS3s and run them there and use your money to pay the bills.
How the hell is a team dedicated to mass computing supposed to use your money in a better way?
Not just Folding @ home but other organizations, the general idea of the post was right, dam nitpicker
Let me refute your reply with the following two items.
1) Except for GPU folding, there is currently no more efficient folding client (in Flops/Watt) than the PS3s. And GPU folding may not even be more efficient when you factor in that the rest of the computer also needs to be powered.
2) You're assuming that rather than the very simple act of running Folding@Home on an idle PS3 between gaming sessions, someone is going to calculate the dollar amount of power the PS3 would have used while folding, and then write out a check every month to Stanford University. Beyond that, you are assuming that Stanford would rather take the power money, buy a PS3 themselves, and spend more money on power, than just have someone who already has a PS3 sitting idle get started Folding.
Also, the last time I checked, the GPU client was limited to the type of folding it could do (thus enhancing it's work unit output "unfairly")
So does this mean that my consoles can fold my clothes?
What a relief. Today was laundry day.
FYI, I have run power consumption test on the PS3 system. I rated power usage of 170W while idling and 170W at full loads. But my Intel PC takes
about 200W while idling and a massive 390W full loaded. So I believe PS3 Folding@home is the more energy efficent way to go. So go on and keep up the Folding@home and save a person or two.
A folding client for the 360 has been in the works for about a year now. Google for it and you will see. This is called doing RESEARCH, something that Engadget's faux journalists seem incapable of.
Oh wait no they are bloggers not journalists which is why they can get away with bias and not researching stories.
I'd be more impressed if Folding improved their clients. I have it running on my PC and it can sure as hell eat up both CPU time and memory. I mean they still haven't released a client thats optimised for multi core CPUs.
Ever hear of SMP? Every one of the Clients listed on the Dowload page that have a bright bold "SMP Client" text next to them are multi-core optimized.
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html
Yes they have four clients marked as SMP but they are all BETA. Whilst I'm usually quite happy to use BETA software I would rather wait for a full release of a folding client.
Please..... If M$ does try to use the FOLDING client, it is ONLY to try to show up the PS3. Its not helping out for anybody but themselves. M$ is basically a MOB. Just look at how they run their business. Sorry, to tell you but it wont happen. The last article about 360 having FOLDING was back in MAY when Moore was there. It wont happen. So do yourself a favor and just give it up...
And Sony is different how?
Didn't ATI make the GPU of the x360? perhaps a little campaign on the AMD forums might make AMD port their folding client to the x360 then, why rely on MS?
Or even try a nice gamecompany that makes games for the 360, would works as an ad for them if they had a folding client named after them.
I don't think MS likes the idea because they already have the thing overheating as it is and they don't want to be responsible for a shortening of the lifetime of their device and then being sued.
Oh and that 'working on a folding client for a year' thing is BS. If you can't code a foldingclient in 2 months tops you obviously are never going to, either because you don't want to or because you aren't in a position to have access enough to the hardware details to code it.
Seriously, more than a year to make a simple app?
The whole planet can circle around the sun in that time, that's including the trouble areas too :)
We'll probably never see Nintendo participate in Folding@Home. I proposed using the Wii for running Folding@Home and other distributed computing applications to Nintendo and only received an automated response form them.
I posted my concept for using gaming consoles to run Folding@Home on the Nintendo forums in June of 2006 but interest in it was limited. Here's the url if anyone is interested in checking it out.
http://forums.nintendo.com/nintendo/board/message?board.id=revolution&message.id=1263950#M1263950
Of course, the Nintendo forums are supposed to be deleted tomorrow (I think), including my thread.
Ha, nintendo, you'd have to run 500 of them to equal one PS3 (and I say that even though I hate sony).
Still, don't they outsell PS3's 500:1 at least? ;)
I guess noone took the time to actually read the folding@home website, so heres why MS and nintendo will never be able to join, A ps3 with its to begin with 8 cores will rock the pants of MS, but its not the cpu that wins the game, its the GPU, folding@home uses a insane amount of floating point operations (FOPS) in their calculations. no cpu in the world can do more FOP's than a GPU. They sped up the calculations with 500x when they started using ATI's X1800 series. MS doesn't have this, and nintendo is built to be a cheep low processing machine, so it wont join either.
I own both a PS3 and a 360 (manufactured in September 2006), and I'm crossing my fingers that my 360 won't fail, and would be terrified at the possibility of invoking the RROD by running F@H on my 360. I do run F@H on my PS3.
I think that may be part of the reason why Microsoft has not ventured to offer this on their console. The failure rates are higher than what they would have wanted and running F@H would probably make things worse.
It's pointless to talk about the 360's CPU folding. It just wouldn't be as good for this situation as the PS3's (if you know how processors work then you agree). However, the 360's GPU on the other hand would provide much greater results. The ATI client already exists for PCs and provides the best performance out of all clients. The only problem I see with this is the fact that the 360's reliability would turn people away from folding (I wouldn't use mine). Love or hate Sony, but you have to admit, they build the PS3s like tanks. Mine has been folding for 3 months straight almost 24/7 (with break times for Resistance and Warhawk), with absolutely no problems.
Ah yes... think of all the CO2 released into the atmosphere by all this computing power...
I wonder which is worse?
You know, all this Fanboy-ism is just sick. You clowns are going to be arguing over who has the "worst" videogaming console until the day you die. All that nonsense is so petty and lame.
This, on the other hand, is significant. Sony's PS3 just boosted the power of the F@H project hugely, with a relatively small contribution of individual units running the program. This could very well help speed a cure to cancer along that much faster.
I'll tell you what. I don't own any of the "next-gen" consoles. Probably will skip this generation, at least. I don't have a bias toward one manufacturer or another, but I have a bias against the children on here that can't be gracious about this and give the PS3 or Sony or the PS3 owners their due praise for contributing to such a worthy project because they own some other brand of console. Shame on you all. I know you little peons will probably jump all over me, but so be it.
On another note, I look at the fact that more people support a @home program that looks for aliens than one that looks for a cure for cancer and I just cringe. That is freaking sad.
It could be sad, unless we find an advanced alien race that bumps our technology curve into he roof and they happen to have already found a cure. ;) That's being optimistic. I stopped processing for SETI YEARS ago and still do fold proteins.
Suggest a Headline Change: PS3 Petaflop Boost, proves no-one's playing games.
No doubt the PS3 is an impressive bit of hardware, but if it was the ultimate games machine don't you think people would be playing games on it?
It'd be impressive if f@h was a background task that only ran during games. This really just shows how many sony fanbois are willing to rack up their power bill just to "prove" the PS3 is best.
I don't know about you, but I go to work every day and sleep about 6-8 hours if I can. Knowing that a work unit can be processed in about 8 hours, that gives you the ability to process 2 work units a day when you don't have a chance to game. That's two more units than any of the other consoles are doing and two more units toward finding a solution/cure. If you use the argument that people are folding because they aren't gaming, your an idiot.
You are also assuming that everyone that folds bought the PS3 for gaming. Currently the PS3 is the best bang for the dollar in folding and yes, there are people that bought the PS3 simply for folding. Check the folding forums. How many game consoles could you sell to a non-gamer? I think it was a great strategy and a great cause. It's a win-win situation any way you look at it. Just because your so close minded that you can't see beyond your blatant blind Sony hate doesn't mean people want to listen to it.
Yo, various fanboys read http://folding.typepad.com/
Hmmm, I am still trying to figure out why this is such a big deal. But a gaming console for games. Sony needs to invest their time in producing good games. And if Sony' machine is so powerfull, why isn't it showing up in their games?
Hell, by having all of these PS3's on all of the time, one can argue that the waste created by the electric companies to power these millions of PS3's are probably contributing to the cancer epidemic. After all, most of the country's power is produced from coal which polutes the atmostphere.