PS3 Folding, anyone?

[zelmo]

I still have to look into power consumption a bit more, but I'm thinking about adding my new PS3 to my Folding farm.
Has anyone done this yet, and/or have you seen any RW performance measurements?

 

[ReanimationLP]

It's good to see someone using all the power of the machine. Sounds like a good idea to me.

I'm so tired of seeing them at my store though. We keep getting them returned, apparently people buy em, go home, see they arent going for insane amounts and return them. >.>'

You know its bad when you've sold the same PS3 7 times over.

Its a really nice machine too. Poor mr. PS3.

I love your icon too. Much less creepier than that Marilyn Manson. Though my brother-in-law loves Marilyn Manson.

 

[zelmo]

I love your icon too. Much less creepier than that Marilyn Manson. Though my brother-in-law loves Marilyn Manson.

hehe, the creepster Manson is back.

Son was sick all weekend, so my PS3 sits in the box waiting for me to set it up. I hope to have it Folding by the weekend.

 

[cantthinkofone]

I didn't think the folding was out for the ps3 yet? Thats what i heard from a friend of mine who owns a ps3 and can recite the manual work for word

 

[darkwing]

I didn't think the folding was out for the ps3 yet? Thats what i heard from a friend of mine who owns a ps3 and can recite the manual work for word

Actually Sony themselves worked with the folding team to bring it to the PS3.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/09/18/playstation.folding/index.html

 

[thestaton]

I bought a PS3 had it for 24 hours and took it back.

did not like the controller, was actually the reason I took it back.
and the fact the graphics looked no better than my 360 and it was not any faster at loading, AND I hated the UI with a passion

 

[MRU]

what's folding ?

 

[wootman]

folding is...

what's folding ?

when a task that would take a supercomputer allot of time to compute is divided into smaller chunks and sent to PC's to process with their spare power.

Also, ps3 folding sounds like a good idea. would be keen to compare its speed to a gaming PC. I remember hearing sony saying they were going to be making it avalable for download or something.

 

[compuwar]

what's folding ?

Folding proteins. See http://folding.stanford.edu

It's a project to advance bioscience to help find cures for things like Alzheimer's and Cancer.

 

[dllavaneras]

Wow, 100.000 PS3s would be 50 times what they have today? Is the PS3 really that powerful? I see a bunch of PS3 farms right now

 

[gkarris]

XBox 360 version?

I'd be willing to put one on my XBox 360...

 

[zelmo]

We'll be able to put the PS3 power to work very soon:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/15/ps3-folding-home-launches-this-month/

 

[MRU]

Will this eat up your internet connection ?

If so - for as wonderful an idea it is in 'theory'... In practice I dont see it being adopted widly other than on an intital 'curiosity' basis.

 

[zelmo]

Will this eat up your internet connection ?

If so - for as wonderful an idea it is in 'theory'... In practice I dont see it being adopted widly other than on an intital 'curiosity' basis.

Folding only connects to the internet to upload completed work units and dl new ones. Very small amounts of data at a time.

 

[zelmo]

Dang it. Finally have the Folding client for PS3 and now the Stanford network is down.

 

[zelmo]

Back up now. holy mother of god...this thing is freaking fast.
Working on a 3136 now [287 pts] and should be done in <9 hours total time. Similar WUs usually take a good 36-48 hours on a decent XP box.

 

[SilentPanda]

My PS3 will be folding full time once I get home. I might get my Mac Pro cooking tonight too. They can have a fold off!

 

[zelmo]

9 hours on the PS3 for a 287pt WU, in contrast to my iMac G4/800 that is currently working on a 186pt WU and should finish it in roughly 145 hours. A PS3 could produce <750 ppd.

 

[zelmo]

Now this is impressive...

EDIT: updated numbers from today show a 300% increase in PS3 Folding CPUs.
CPUs: 12,394 PS3 vs 158,987 WIN
TFLOPS: 304 PS3 vs 151 WIN


dammmmmmmnnnnnnn.

 

[pseudobrit]

This is snowballing quickly. I wonder where the ceiling is.

 

[Dreadnought]

How could those PS3 have such high numbers. They only have 3.2 Ghz Cell processor in them. 3.2 is pretty fast, but it is a Cell proc. Did someone forget to divide it through a 1000?!?

 

[pseudobrit]

How could those PS3 have such high numbers. They only have 3.2 Ghz Cell processor in them. 3.2 is pretty fast, but it is a Cell proc. Did someone forget to divide it through a 1000?!?

Maybe because it's got 7 cores crunching the numbers. The PS3 is very well suited for applications like folding.

 

[Dreadnought]

That would explain a lot! Didn't know that. But with folding (at least in the past) every core needed a different WU. A core can't share or help with the WU of a different core because the outcome of one step determines the raw data for the next step. So a PS3 is doing 7 WU's at once?!?!

 

[SilentPanda]

My PS3 was folding from Thursday through Saturday morning... well... at some point it froze, my PS3 bricked and now I have a new PS3.

I'm kinda scared to start it going again although I hear many people have left theirs on longer. I really want to fold (and the PS3 can fold well!) but I don't want to have to get a new PS3 every few days to do it...

 

[pseudobrit]

That would explain a lot! Didn't know that. But with folding (at least in the past) every core needed a different WU. A core can't share or help with the WU of a different core because the outcome of one step determines the raw data for the next step. So a PS3 is doing 7 WU's at once?!?!

The newer SMP clients will spread the workload to all available cores. The Intel Mac clients do the same thing.