PS3 Folding@Home Begins with Impressive Numbers 114
hansamurai writes "As we've previously discussed, the Folding@Home client is now available on the PS3, and already some early results are in. The total number of teraflops generated by PS3s has already exceeded all other OS contributions combined and the entire project is heading towards one petaflop of distributed computing power. Stanford notes that their teraflops calculation is conservatively calculated so the total power could be under-appreciated. With the PS3 European release complete and the Folding client already available to them, the number of users will continue to grow for the time being, let's hope that the project does not run out of work units to pass out. Kotaku has some numbers that are a few hours old since the Stanford server is getting hit pretty hard with the renewed interest in the project."
Very old numbers (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Very old numbers (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the numbers are being taken from this web site [stanford.edu].
that loud noise you hear (Score:2)
Is hundreds of thousands of PC users shouting "AIMBOT" and "CHEATER".
Seriously tho, I've been shocked at the GPU/PS3 #'s...still doesn't make me want a PS3...ATI/AMD AGP 19XX
Radeon, maybe. (do they exist? I thought they did, but nothing on the 'egg...yet).
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If you want the best possible AGP card, get BFG's Geforce 7800 GS OC (it's overclocked out of the box and has nice cooling to cover it). I got mine at Best Buy for $185 about a month ago (which I wouldn't normally do, but the same thing was $210 on the 'egg). I'm able to run Oblivion smoothly at 1280x1024 with Ultra H
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Ah, thanks, I missed that one.
If it did not have that hoover vacuum cleaner/blower attached to it, I'd consider it.
Sticks out way too far for my case, judging by the measurements...double height I could live with, but the
width is a bit too much.
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What about global warming? (Score:3, Interesting)
Last I heard, F@H was a feel-good novelty that is doubtful to ever produce any meaningful results.
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Curing cancer... pfft. Like that's gonna help anyone.
Re:What about global warming? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What about global warming? (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you hear that? I don't know any details, but it's easy to find a voice of dissent from your view:
""For the most part, it's not that we're looking for a needle in a haystack, but we're looking for broad properties that require good statistics," said Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University. As one of the scientists behind the project, Pande is proud to say that Folding@home has actually provided useful information to the scientific community. SETI@home, however, has yet to discover a single alien transmission."
""These successes are documented in peer review journals. Over 50 papers have resulted from Folding@home," said Pande. He and his students collaborated with developers from Sony Computer Entertainment of America to build a Folding@home client for the PlayStation 3, but that wasn't really Pande's idea."
(In-Depth: Sony, Stanford Experts Talk PS3 Folding@home [gamasutra.com])
"Now, for the first time, a distributed computing experiment has produced significant results that have been published in a scientific journal. Writing in the advanced online edition of Nature magazine, Stanford University scientists Christopher D. Snow and Vijay S. Pande describe how they with the help of 30,000 personal computers successfully simulated part of the complex folding process that a typical protein molecule undergoes to achieve its unique, three-dimensional shape. Their findings were confirmed in the laboratory of Houbi Nguyen and Martin Gruebele scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who co-authored the Nature study."
(Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success [sciencedaily.com])
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I hate to repeat a post, but for additional information:
In case anyone is wondering about what the project has acheived so far, here is the link [stanford.edu].
Concerning global warming, the processing statistics [stanford.edu] imply the PS3 is by far the most efficient. At 380 watts [gizmodo.com], using the statistics given (which are said to be conservative in the case of the PS3), that puts the PS3 at 63 teraFLOPS/megawatt, or 16.5 kilowatts/teraFLOPS. I'm not really familiar with this, but isn't that fairly good? It's definately better
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Re:What about global warming? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wonder why there isn't a World Community Grid client for PS3 yet? It's IBM's project and IBM makes the processor for the PS3 don't they? I would think they would be using these numbers to sell more Cell's. Maybe that's what we need to get Team Slashdot [worldcommunitygrid.org] back on top. :)
WCG has some very good work that needs done as well.
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Re:What about global warming? (Score:4, Interesting)
Heh. The client does tell you what protein you're looking at, if you care enough to investigate it. My understanding is that the most likely benefit to disease research would be finding how "bad folds" happen, which are responsible for things like Alzheimers.
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As to useful results, it's just a distributed supercomputer. Why would its results be more feel-good and less meaningful than those of any other ~500 TFLOP computer? It's not like researchers can ever get enough processing power. Molecular folding is a processor intensive and parallelizable research problem with real applicability, and I'd rather see people
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An exception is the scenario where somebody w
Re:What about global warming? (Score:4, Informative)
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If the PS2 had it, I bet the PS3 does too.
That's all nice and good but (Score:5, Funny)
When will the SNES version finally be available?
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(I should complete my first work unit sometime in August.)
impressive (Score:3, Insightful)
Interest might not drop off too much (Score:2)
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power bill (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:power bill (Score:4, Informative)
according to this
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.
the ps3 uses about 200watts maximum
and if you look at the cost per kwh around the US http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/brochure/electricity/
and round up for the sake of argument, so say you run it for 24 hours a day, you never play any games on it, and you are paying $0.10
more realistically say you pay $0.10/kwh and only run f@h when you are asleep, so 8 hours a day, less than $5 a month more than you would have paid otherwise.
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I wonder if that can be written off as a charitable expense.
The Real Question Now (Score:3, Interesting)
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I do wonder if an actual business would ever do this (assuming its employees were allowed to play games during breaks.. douptful, but funny idea.)
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http://folding.stanford.edu/donate/ [stanford.edu]
.
For 64bit floats, the PS3 is a powerhouse (Score:2, Insightful)
a) use primarily 64bit floating point
b) either:
- fit code and data segments within 256K for each SPU
- crunch long enough between streamed data blocks such that DMA latency doesn't kill performance
c) have the entire calculation broken down into no more than six par
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SPU: 2 execution pipes, each 128-bits wide, for a total of 8 32-bit VECTORIZED (SIMD) operations per-clock.
8 * 3.2 GHz = 25.6 GFLOPS for each SPU. These are the same performance numbers being quoted everywhere for SPU SINGLE-PRECISION. This performance-level would not be possible if your math was accurate to 64-bits.
In fact, 64-bit (double) operations actually cut performance because the SPU has to re-use the single-precision SIMD hardware (it has to sacrifice the SIMD function
Will someone please downmod my parent post? (Score:1)
You're absolutely right: It's IEEE floats (Score:1)
http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/SPU.html [ibm.com]
Re:For 64bit floats, the PS3 is a powerhouse (Score:5, Informative)
Cell is very optimized toward one data type for calculation: 64bit floats
Wrong!!! Cell is optimized towards 4-float vectors of 32-bit floats. All the vector math operations on the SPU operate this way and it's capable of doing 8 32-bit operations per cycle (FMAC = 32-bit multiply + 32-bit add X 4 wide). On the other hand, 64-bit operations are scalar and non-pipelined. The take a minimum of 7 cycles for throughput and can have longer latency (13 clock cycles). The maximum 32-bit FP Single Precision (SP) rate is at least 28 times faster than the DP rate.
b) either:
- fit code and data segments within 256K for each SPU
- crunch long enough between streamed data blocks such that DMA latency doesn't kill performance
Wrong!!! Actually, a single code processing step and data should fit in considerably less than 256K. Preferably around 128K. Then you can double-buffer your DMA's for input and output. When you do this the DMA latency doesn't even matter unless your processing occurs faster than the DMA transfers since your DMA's are completely asynchonous to the SPU processing. This simple method of programming can hide nearly all DMA latency -- especially for code that repetitively iterates on multiple data blocks.
c) have the entire calculation broken down into no more than six parts for streaming (one per SPU)
Wrong!!! You can break the calculation into many more parts than six. As a matter of fact you could have 100 calculation parts on on chunk of data and simply swap in new code and work on old data. You can arbitrarily schedule more than a single task per SPU. Sony (and even IBM on non PS3 Cells) have libraries that allow you to share SPUs between many different tasks with only a very small minimal overhead incurred in switching between a task on the SPU.
Also, SPUs don't support a supervisor bit for memory protection
Wrong!!! The SPU's can only directly access their own local memory. All other accesses go through a protected external memory interface (the SPU DMA to main memory) and are controlled by memory protection. It is possibly to virtualize and lock-out SPU's from the rest of the system and run them in "safe mode". If the SPU's could run rampantly and access the entire memory there wouldn't be much point to Sony running a hypervisor to keep you out of their system space on the PS3 linux project and still give you access to the SPU. Also, it wouldn't make much sense not to have memory protection from IBM's point of view to use Cell's as CPUs for clustered supercomputers.
bad things happen when threaded code running on SPU goes tits up
Wrong!!! There is no reason on the CELL hardware why it shouldn't be possible to kill SPU threads / processes and the SPU rescheduled by the OS if necessary. This way a single task can no more take down an SPU than the PPSU. It is possible to even swap out an entire SPU programs pre-emptively on the fly and restore their state. This incurs a much higher swap cost (full SPU threading) than a more simple task manager because you have to save and restore the entire context of the SPU (including 128 16-byte registers and 256K memory region) but your implied limitation of the SPU's is definitely incorrect here.
If you want to calculate 128bit floats, ints, or have lots of branch logic... buy a quad core2duo
So quad-core2duo can do 128-bit floats ? If you're thinking SSE (4 X 32-bit floats) then the SPU's do the same thing. SPU's can run integer code albeit more slowly since most of the integer operations are scalar but still running integer code in parallel on an SPU can sometimes be faster than a Core2Duo - If you align scalar-processed integers to 16-bits for preferred slot l
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Your other arguments boil down to: we don't program Cell like that. In particular, y
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You are right in that the SPU local store doesnt have any protection. You can write straight off the end and screw up your SPU program. The SPUs can only access their local store directly, though, so they cannot ever trash main memory.
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DMA has latency, and requires a response from the PPU on an interrupt. I realize the DMA controller can move arbitrary pages mapped from the page table into LS. It's - what - broken up into 16KB blocks. Right? I think that's right. But within LS the SPU doesn't have real memory protection. Arguably, it doesn't need it.
WRT your last paragraph: you are absolutely right. I'm looking at this from the perspective of one who wants to solve a single problem, and who isn't a professional Cell dev.
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FWIW, it is possible for DMA to be initiated and controlled completely from the SPU's without any PPU intervention - I'm not sure if this is exposed in PS3 linux but the CELL is certainly capable of completely SPU driven DMA from a hardware perspective. In this case, the only latency is in the actual time to fetch data from main memory to local store. This is the similar to the type of stall you get with a data cache miss on a general
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As well you should. Don't your colleagues know about the NCSA PS2 cluster? They proved that scientific work was feasible on game machines, especially with optimized code.
GEEEK FIIIGHT!! (Score:2)
Le'me get the popcorn!
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> Wrong!!! Cell is optimized towards 4-float vectors of 32-bit floats.
> Wrong!!! Actually, a single code processing step and data should fit in considerably less than 256K.
> Wrong!!! You can break the calculation into many more parts than six.
A most informative post, but did anyone else have that SNL parody of the McLaughlin group going through their heads?
Is this a bad thing? (Score:2)
If they are out of work units, doesn't that mean they are that much closer to their goal? To me, it seems that if they run out of work units, it means the work is being completed quicker then expected. Seems like a good problem to have.
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From an earlier comment about folding@home, it seems like they're not looking for anything specifically, but rather they have hunches about protein properties and need statistical backing to verify the hunches. I'd say that it's likely that the work unit creation is fairly automated and can pump out a large number of packets.
It's not like seti@home where work units represent some quanta of recorded astronomical data (though seti@home does apparently verify its work unit analysis results by having multiple
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There are a lot of potential individual F@H projects that got rejected in the past because even with the insane amount of computing power available, they would still take too many years to fully complete.
The "Worst Case Scenario" in this instance then is that the available TFlops skyrocket, all the current projects get "finished", and the bigger projects become realistic and feasible.
F@H ps3 vs 360 (Score:1)
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No matter who wins, science wins.
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for(int i=0; i<size; i++)
out[i] = f( in[i] );
Where f is some arbitrary function. Note that the positions in the array cannot be changed - these corrospond to the xy positions of the target pixels. For a scatter operation (very useful in simulations, sieving etc):
for(int i=0; i<size; i++
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Also, as I understand it, the number of TFLOPS is not the only performance criterium for the folding@home project, and GPU's with the same # of FLOPs compared to different (CPU) architectures yield less useful results.
Results (Score:1)
In case anyone is wondering about what the project has acheived so far, here is the link [stanford.edu].
Concerning global warming, the processing statistics [stanford.edu] imply the PS3 is by far the most efficient. At 380 watts (at least this is what I've heard), using the statistics given (which are said to be conservative in the case of the PS3), that puts the PS3 at 63 teraFLOPS/megawatt, or 16.5 kilowatts/teraFLOPS. I'm not really familiar with this, but isn't that fairly good? It's definately better than using PCs. Blue Gene
if you're looking at power efficiency (Score:2)
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What's so impressive here... (Score:5, Interesting)
GPU: 41tflop 697cpus
PLAYSTATION®3 346tflop 14138cpus
so basically the GPUs are 2.4x as powerful as the PS3s.
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If, on the other hand, you're only worried about arguments about what machine is "better", then yeah, you're right.
But not everything in life is about CPU dick-waving contests.
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Although the folding folks were smart to put on an animated 3d screensaver with the client which will make it that much more likely
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Conversely, you could just turn off your TV.
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Different work units? (Score:3, Informative)
Personal Results (Score:1)
My PC, which is only an Athlon 64 3500+ (benchmarked at 7190 in F@H) can crunch through a frame every 1 minute and 7 seconds.
My PS3 is going through a frame every 0.067 seconds.
Frame performance doesn't mean much in F@H because differe
GPU performance (Score:2, Informative)
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Comparision of Ps3 vs. PC flawed. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Well as others pointed out the Cell processor is MADE to do this, it's not made to do games (believe me, the processor has stuff that's directly against good programming design for video games, the size of the memory available to each process is a big problem) but it can do this.
However also remember that for the PC you're also running an OS under it. running a firewall, a anti-virus software, Explorer or firefox, and other fun tools
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I wonder how a new $500-$600 PC would fair against the PS3 when folding (I'm guesstimating that one could purchase a bare PC with some cheaper A64 X2 and an X1950XT at that price).
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It is true that an effective memory size of 128Kb per processor (SPU, needs to be split in half for DMA double-buffering) limits what you can do in one chunk of code. But I think adisakp [slashdot.org] said it best:
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The cell process is only here because Sony forced it onto game programmers. It's a brillian
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But the Cell is being pushed by IBM, not just Sony. What I hope will happen (see, I'm pretty anti-Microsoft) is that the Havok engine, along with other libraries, will be developed for the Cell. However, havok.com is not likely to release source code. What's missing, in my opinion, is the f
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Currently, I think both companies are pretty bad, the 360 is the best platform but relying on Microsoft to continue to make good hardware and not screw ove
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Well it could be 20 times as powerful as the average computer on folding at home ...
I guess the question is how many PCs on this system are Pentium 2, Pentium 3, Pentium 4, Core Duo, and Core 2 Duo based PCs?
I could be wrong but I would suspect that the bulk of these PCs are University lab computers and people's obsolete home PCs (that is, not a gaming PC) so I wouldn't be surprised if most of the PCs are Pentium 2, Pentium 3 and slow
The really cool thing is (Score:1)
/. team number (Score:3, Informative)
Early results? (Score:2)
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3:34pm up 11 days, 23:20, 2 users, (I've telnetted in from the windows box, I was running Second Life) load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00
Would be longer if it wasn't for the damn power outages, thing runs 24/7 otherwise.
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Re:From much less CPU's too (Score:5, Funny)
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