GT40s.com Folding @ Home Team Formed

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-02-07, 09:52 PM

Hi Folks,

Most of you are probably wondering what is "Folding @ Home" and what does it have to do with GT40s.com?

Folding @ Home is a distributed computing project being run by Stanford University that is attempting to understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, Parkinson’s etc.

The basic idea is that you run a free Folding @ Home application client on your PC, Mac, Linux box or Playstation 3. which only uses compute cycles when your processor is idle. Your computer fetches work units, executes them and sends the results back to Stanford University for analysis. I’ve got 5 computers that participate and I thought that since most GT40s.com members are computer literate, it might be cool to have a GT40s.com “folding at home” team (all of the participants of a team are counted together as a unit, see below). This way, we can see just how much impact we are having on progress towards curing some of these diseases. As far as I know we would be the only car marque based team.

I’m probably doing a poor job of explaining this so here is a much better explanation:

Folding@Home Distributed Computing

I talked to Ron about this and he agreed that this seems like an easy and useful community service that our virtual community of members could participate in and perhaps do ourselves some good in the long run.

So, I have set up a GT40s.com team (number 63884) that we could use if you like the idea.

Our current stats are here (I just changed my computers from team 0, the default, to GT40s.com [63884] so they won't start showing up until they finish their current work units):

Folding@Home GT40s.com

And here is a list of the top 100 teams right now:

Folding@Home Top 100

Feel free to ask any questions you may have and I'll do my best to help answer them.

"Folding@Home is the most powerful distributed computing resource on the planet, and for the calculations run (parallel independent molecular dynamics trajectories), the most powerful supercomputer of any type (distributed or otherwise)."

I would not recommend running this on your work laptops or any other mission critical servers, but that old PC in your garage that is plugged in and not really being used except on weekends would be a great candidate.

Best Regards,

Al

Ron Earp · 04-03-07, 10:30 PM

To the top, some of you guys should give this a go. This is similar to the SETI distributed computing project, but helps far more people. I plan to use three computers here at the house to help out.

Ron

Big-Foot · 04-03-07, 10:38 PM

There's actually a whole bunch of Distributed Computing efforts out there.. I first became aware of it with the SETI Project (Seti at home) SETI@home

Now you can be involved in Cancer and AIDS (such as folding at home) research and a bunch more.
Check some of them out here:
List of distributed computing projects - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scott · 04-04-07, 02:17 AM

Done. I've got a quad processor box in my lab at work that I think is idle right now. If it is I'll add this to it for a while.

raca · 04-04-07, 06:16 AM

count me in !

btw how do i know its working ?

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-04-07, 10:32 AM

Hi Raca,

The best way is to go to here:

Folding@Home GT40s.com team stats

after you've been running the folding at home software for a while. Only completed "work units" show up, and depending on the computer you have, this can take some time. For example some of my computers won't show up for a while:

Old 500 MHz G3 iMac in my garage - 30 days to complete 1 work unit

2.16 GHz Core Duo Mac - 2 days to complete 1 work unit

3 GHz dual core PC with Folding at home running on the ATI GPU card - 1 day to complete a work unit

The kid's PS3 - 8 hours to complete one work unit!

Also in the folding at home folder on your computer, there is a file called unitinfo.txt which shows the current progress you are making on a given work unit. you can just open this with any text editor and see where you stand.

Regards,

Al

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-04-07, 10:34 AM

One other thing, be careful entering your GT40s.com team ID (63884), I noticed that I have a few wrong right now and am contributing to other teams - dang

.

Once you submit a work unit, you can't change who it is associated with.

Regards,

Al

The Dutch(Jos Vervoorn) · 04-04-07, 01:38 PM

You can count me in too. I have a bunch of PC's etc with lots of idle time. I will also ask my fellow workers, not such explicit GT fans as I'm, to make thier idle PC's process for the GT40s.com group.

Very, very nice initiative.

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-05-07, 10:06 AM

A quick update...

Regards,

Al

raca · 04-06-07, 01:50 AM

this thing is great yesterday I found my self staring in to the Display, watching th thing grow

ONE BIG ISSUE !

i cant play anything while the thing is running

, i tried to put it in on pause, still nothing, the only way is to shut the program down, play, finish playing, and turning it on again
But its a bit of a pain, and i don't want to forget to turn it on a waste a day of folding !!!

any ideas ??

Ron Earp · 04-06-07, 07:41 AM

I've got two machines on it now, projected finish is Saturday. Not very fast, but they are machines that are a couple years old. I'll see if I can scare up a newer model or two to run it.

Can an Xbox do it? Sydney has one that is doing nothing 99% of the time.

R

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-06-07, 09:20 AM

Hi Ron,

The only game console that supports it today is the PS3, but I have heard that there is work underway to support the Xbox 360. I'll post when I hear more.

Hi Raca,

Can you let me know what hardware and version (console, screensaver, GPU) of the software you are running. Even on my dog slow old PC, as soon as there is any keyboard or mouse input, it stops folding and lets you do whatever you need.

Regards,

Al

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-06-07, 09:23 AM

Ron,

One other thing - If she has an xbox (not a 360), have you tried the "Forza" driving sim? I think it's great - especially driving a GT40 Mk II around Road America

. Now that Forza 2 is coming out for the Xbox 360, you can pick up the xbox version used for less than 10 bucks.

Regards,

Al

raca · 04-06-07, 03:16 PM

all i can tell right now is that i hav Folding@Home 5.03 version does that help you in any way

Paul Thompson 'Hooligan' · 04-06-07, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ahirsbrunner

The only game console that supports it today is the PS3

Regards,

Al

Hi Alex -

How do you load the PS3 application? - I have one on wireless broadband so while i'm out during the day it might as well be doing something...

Paul Thompson 'Hooligan' · 04-06-07, 05:48 PM

Ah-Ha...

Just visited PS3 FAQ and now know what the link on the PS3 is for.... (only had it 3 days)... So will configure later tonight...

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-06-07, 06:16 PM

Hi Raca,

OK, so that's the Windows XP non-GPU based client. That's the only one that I haven't tried. I have another Windows XP machine I can install it on and see if I get the same result. Do you know what processor type/speed you have?

Thanks,

Al

Alex Hirsbrunner · 04-06-07, 06:21 PM

One thing I should mention to PS3 owners. You will need to perform a system update to version 1.6 of the PS3 system software to run folding at home (you will be prompted to do this automatically if you have the PS3 connected to the internet (wireline or wireless). If you just got your PS3 you may already have this version and be almost ready to go. Once you select the folding at home item in the PS3 menus you be asked to download the sharing at home client (50 MB) and then you are set.

Regards,

Al

Paul Thompson 'Hooligan' · 04-06-07, 06:49 PM

Thanks AL -

Updated to 1.6 - downloaded s/w - installed and joined the 'GT40s.com Team'

PS3 is now chugging away nicely! - 7hrs 44 mins to go...