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[Folding@Home is a distributed computing project that takes advantage of otherwise idle computing resources on volunteer's computers to simulate how proteins fold and thus guide progress to finding a cure to diseases such as: Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers. --martyb]
Back in February of this year, one of our site's members Sir Finkus introduced our community to Folding@Home with this story:
I've taken the liberty of setting up an official folding@home team for SoylentNews. In case you aren't familiar with folding@home, it's a distributed computing project that simulates protein folding in an attempt to better understand diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's.
There is more information on the project here , which explains it much better than I could.
Clients are available for Linux, OSX, and even Windows (if you swing that way), so come join our botnet!
That Other Site's team is ranked at 1817, so we've got some catching up to do.
On a personal note, my Dad carries the gene markers for Huntington's disease, and will eventually succumb to it. Research like this is very helpful for understanding, and hopefully developing treatments for it.
tl;dr Our Soylent News team ID is 230319
We are pleased to announce that our SoylentNews Folding@Home team is now approaching the top 500 spot! Our team size has plateaued, but new members are welcome at any time. To put this milestone in perspective, since the time when the team started in mid-Februrary of this year, we have overtaken 229,814 teams!
We even have a channel, #folding, on IRC.
Official Stats:
http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/teamstats/team230319.html
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=230319
Better Stats at:
Team Summary
Teams Overall Rank
Overtake Projections - Teams Ranked 501-600
Overtake Projections - Teams Ranked 499-500
Related Coverage:
Soylent News has a Top 1000 Folding@Home Team!
Huntington's Disease: University of Toronto Researcher is First to Share Lab Notes in Real Time
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Gravis on Sunday August 21 2016, @05:35PM
This news isn't really news because the only thing reported that's different from the last time is the team rank. Saying you have reached a goal you have set for yourselves is very self-congratulatory, so you are now back at the bottom of the ranks for humility@home. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @06:30PM
A possible NSA related web robot crawling the site was hailed as a major breakthrough for the community as well. On one hand this is pretty weak sauce to pat yourself on the back for.
On the other hand take what you can get in terms of publicity. SN is growing and that is a good thing. Maybe the green site will melt down again under the new owners and another influx of nubs can show up.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 21 2016, @06:45PM
AHHH-HAAA-HA!! You is funny - NOT!!
Yes, we are congratulating ourselves. We're doing something that we percieve to be "good". Small community here, we think we deserve just a little recognition.
Far more importantly, we would LIKE for others to join in.
People, if you have spare computer time, please donate it. Among other things, FAH is searching for cures for cancer, malaria, and other diseases. FAH is not a commercial concern, it is not a pharmaceutical. FAH is pretty much just pure research. And, maybe they'll find the cure for one of your loved one's terminal condition. Maybe.
If you have a decent graphics card, you can do a lot of good with it.
For comparison - I have a server with dual Opterons, 12 cores total. Those CPU's earn about 20,000 points per day, or 10,000 per 6 core CPU.
A GTX 630 revision 1 earns about 10,000 points per day. The GTX 730 earns about the same.
A GTX 780 TI earns about 270,000 points per day.
A GTX 970 earns about 300,000 points per day.
I read an article which suggested that the new GTX 1080 might get close to a million points per day.
Idle CPU time, or GPU time - it's all welcome. Even the older, slower CPU's are welcome. I have a laptop that makes a few hundred points per day, but over a period of time, it helps!
Bring them on, people - download and install the folding client, and join us!
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:24PM
Get a room, you two.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:26PM
Actually, running it on older, slower gear appears to be rather futile for earning points at least.
The points do not scale linearly. Running one computer with a quad core earns more points than running two separate computers each with a dual core.
According to wiki your GTX 970 does 3494 GFLOPS, and you report getting 300,000 points.
According to wiki a Radeon 5570 does 520 GFLOPS, but I was only getting something like 1,200pts per day from it. If I ran F@H on every system I have in the house I might get a measly 6,000pts per day.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:33PM
I was confused by that. Or, actually, I still am. It isn't just the GFLOPS that translate into points. My 780 TI says 5036 GFLOPS, and cmn's 970 says 3494 GFLOPS, but he smokes me for PPD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_700_series [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_900_series [wikipedia.org]
I have zero idea how that translates over to ATI GPU's. It would be nice if we could all put our average results into a spreadsheet, to see which GPU's are "best". Obviously, taking published GFLOPS doesn't tell the whole story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @01:20AM
Perhaps in addition to how fast your GPU is, you have to take into account how much you use the computer? folding@home makes use of idle time. If you're doing a lot of gaming, video watching, etc, then those are cycles not going to the folding project.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 22 2016, @11:31AM
Again, there is more to it than that. The architecture is different with each succeeding generation of GPU's. Among other things, they get more and more memory. The communication busses keep increasing in size, and speed. With any CPU/GPU combination, your computer usage is going to affect the PPD, but even allowing for that, the newest generation GPU just smokes the older generation. That, despite the fact that the GFLOP's haven't officially changed a whole lot.
Of course, part of the issue with PPD is, your points increase geometrically as your computing time decreases. So, you only need a little faster computer to make a lot more points than the other guy.
On my end, my internet truly sucks. I've watched the client returning a large work unit, worth a lot of points. That big work unit might take half an hour to be sent off, and all the while, the points awarded keeps depreciating. When the WU finished computing, it may have said it was worth 150,000 points, but when the transmit finished, it was only 140,000, or maybe even 135,000.
Maybe, if I had good interent, my 780TI MIGHT keep up with cmn's 970, but I don't really think so. Even when I get smaller WU's all day long, and the crappy internet is less of a factor, my machine doesn't keep up with his 970.
(Score: 1) by ewk on Monday August 22 2016, @01:44PM
And then you have the issue of not getting 100% return of the points you calculate for.
Not sure how F@H manages this, but with other BOINC-projects I usually get somewhere between 60% to 80% of the 'offered' points.
Probably some relation with the amount of other calculators handing in the same results as well and/or the speed in which the results are returned.
So, with a slower card you might always be at the end of handing over resutls and (therefore?) get fewer points.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:09PM
This is one of the reasons why i like this place : ) Different points of view are great! Though i do disagree with you it is probably because i'm on the FAH team. These kinds of articles seem like advertisements to get more people on the team. Not necessarily a bad thing and it opens up a meta discussion.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 22 2016, @08:46AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @06:39PM
Is it possible to read this as "SOYLENT has reached the top 500 of CO2 polluters in TEH WORLD?"
If everyone's computer went into standby instead of running this program, how many lives would be saved?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @07:21PM
Only if you assume that everyone's power is generated in a manner that produces greenhouse gasses. What if you are solar powered, or in an area that has a hydroelectric source, or even a geothermal source.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 21 2016, @07:58PM
Let's get some stats on that - % of Team Soylent on green power.
While you're at it, let's consider how much of that green power could have been used to reduce polluting power if it hadn't been burned in Folding At Home.
Then, let's all take a step back and look at "real industry" and see just how insignificant this whole Folding At Home endeavor is to the CO2 situation as compared to something like a Steel forging operation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 21 2016, @07:28PM
No extra CO2 here. I've just made my kids all hold their breath, so it's just a simple tradeoff.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday August 21 2016, @07:41PM
There's an added benefit that they're much less noisy. Kudos! :)
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:42PM
lives lost due to air pollution and coal mining, vs. lives to be saved by Folding-related medical research.
Maybe you can get a grant to conduct this study and find out which will be higher.
Computers also generate "free" heat, so anybody who was going to use electric heat anyway doesn't have much to lose.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:19PM
I live in a country that produces almost 100% of it's power with geothermal and hydro electricity, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over CO2 production.