Folding at Home on your PS3

So I started doing the Folding at Home on my PS3 today, kinda neat. You can do it overnight, etc, when it's not doing anything. Anyway, it seems like you can create your own teams for this and was going to gauge interest in seeing if we can start a HBT Team, and see how many protein strain calculations we can get through.

 

No way man!
They're stringing our computers together and they're doin' it for free. Let 'em pay a slice of my electric bill and I'm all for it.

 

well, I don't turn off computers...it's bad for them, so why not let them use extra CPU cycles?

 

Source: Here

 

well.. since the controllers don't charge unless the ps3 is on (at least thats been my experiance) I do fold now and again. I'm in for a HBT team!

 

eh, it just stays on all the time

 

Yeah the folding at home client for PS3 is pretty neat. I play it sometimes. Its been a while since I've gotten interested in playing it.

One thing that stuck me as very interesting about is, is how many more work units get accomplished on a PS3 than on say a Quad Core Pentium Xeon. Later on when the Stats page for FAH isn't performing an update - I'll fix up a link to show you my stats page. Its pretty weird that my PS3 which isn't even left on most of the time outperforms my Quad Core Xeon Server with 2 GB of memory that runs the FAH client 24x7x365.

 

And in case any of you 80+ other people who looked at this thread (or maybe just me) wonder what the heck they are talking about, here is Folding at Home or (FAH) courtesy of Wikipedia. I was seriously thinking it was some kind of laundry game when I saw the title.

 

I'd be willing to join a HBT. I do folding occasionally, especially if I have to charge my controllers. Its for a really good cause. Its not like we're helping some people get rich.

 

Sure. Do we have a team name/number yet?

 

I dunno how to do it, let me go check it out

 

New team Homebrewtalk.com with number 142568 has been founded by 98EXL


Any client program can contribute to the statistics for this team by putting the number 142568 in the team field in the client

 

I've been crunching for the world community grid on pc. Is it possible to use this for the group?

My Statistics

Welcome back John and Wendy
Registered Member Since: 11/17/2004

Activity Summary
My Accumulated Points: 2,493,243
My Current Ranking: 3,153

Totals:
Total Run Time (y:d:h:m:s) (Rank) 4:009:21:17:08 (#5,561)
Points Generated (Rank) 2,493,243 (#3,153)
Results Returned (Rank) 5,670 (#4,154)
Averages:
Avg. Run Time Per Calendar Day (y:d:h:m:s) 0:001:01:49:31
Avg. Run Time Per Result (y:d:h:m:s) 0:000:06:13:18
Avg. Points Per Hour of Run Time 70.68
Avg. Points Per Calendar Day 1,825.21
Avg. Points Per Result 439.73
Avg. Results Per Calendar Day 4.15
Miscellaneous:
Last Result Returned (UTC) 08/12/2008 10:55:59 [13+ hour(s) ago]

 

Just a note to say when I pointed out the cost of leaving on a PS3 I didn't fully understand FAH. I knew it was the pooling of the processers for someone else but didn't know who.

Looks like worthwhile research. That said, and without starting an environmental debate, perhaps the money spent on leaving it on would be better served as a direct donation or something?

 

I dunno, and don't care. I have a bunch of PC's running various crap around the house, I'm not worried about my least expensive power eating machine on all the time to fold....

 

Hmmm....I've always been told that leaving the PC on is better for it.....but I kind of believe there's a statute of limitations on that. If you only played the PS3 for say, 3 days a week 4 hours each time, it seems like you'd be exposing the components to unnecessary wear & tear and heat for the rest of the week. Even my laptop, which I use daily, goes into standby and eventually shuts down after a few hours of not being used. Am I wrong to do this?

 

Oh yea, you don't want to start up a computer too many times, or you'll blow the starter motor out of it.

From what I have heard, it's better to either leave the PC on all the time, or shut it down if it's not going to be in use for awhile. Shutting it down and starting it up sends a surge of electricity through all the components. I'm not sure how relevant that is in today's PCs, it's just what I've known.

 

Still seems to be true, haven't heard anything otherwise about it

 

Its basically true, because the only wear occurs on your PC during the initial power surge when you start it up. Powering your computer up and down most definitely will shorten its lifetime. However, worrying about harming your computer by shutting it down and starting it back up is pretty pointless because your computer will be obsolete and not of any use long before you will ever damage it by turning off and back on again.

 

i just joined the team.

 

werd, here is the link to our stats page

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=142568

 

that is. let me reboot that computer and we will check again.

 

I'd only do it if I got a cut of the profits from any commercially marketable products or processes derived from the computational research. Otherwise, I would not be interested in contributing my PS3 cycles for the sake of altruism.

 

Assuming they are properly cooled & vented, electronics do live a longer life if left on.

But, unlike their older ancestors who ran at a constant rate, modern CPU's consume far more power (and output more heat) when they are under load. Which means the harder it thinks, the higher your power bill. If you're going to contribute cycles to FaH, SETI, etc be sure and check your computer with a line monitor (like Kill-a-Watt) and know just how much you are actually contributing.

Not that I'm against such efforts (I've participated in SETI and distributed.net), just making sure you know it's not "free"

 

you can seriously tell i am in need of a new gpu. that old fx5200 isnt cutting it and the other sis onboard gpu is even worse. those ps3's are just wooping up on me. maybe ill have to build me that insane cluster that guy built.

http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/370859-nitteo-s-f-h-gpu2-farm.html

 

that ish is pretty impressive, although I'd still put them in cases