Folding@home figures get readers in a tizz

SUBJECT: PS3 King at FaH?

Need to do a bit more research on that one mate.

Take in to account the type of calculations, the scope of the work, size of the work units. and quite a few other variables.

Different clients come at the problems form different angles. So to try and name a "king" is ludicrous at best.

If all the platforms were using the same methods to get the results, things would be much different.

I'm waiting for about a month when we start reading stories about how someone's PS3 smoked itself because it's not designed to run full tilt on a 24/7 basis.

got 3 pcs that have been working FaH for almost 3 years now. Gotta pull the covers off about once a month or so, and blow the dust out less they start running hot.

Going to be interesting to see how long it takes for someone's high dollar game toy to fry itself.

Fingerlew

Subject: Printers & Ink

Wow, time for companies to save ink...

It's hard to see how companies can get 10 pages of color printed as I find that when you "clean" (inkjet mind you) the printheads you use 20% of the ink (or so the printer marks it that way)....

Lets have print companies start making printers that work 99% of the time, that can see some type of maintenance, and that uses ink that doesnt cost more than than gold laced coca leaves.

J Lewter

Subject: Folding@Home

Yup, that's correct. I've been running Folding@Home on a number of very high end PC's for some time. A "work unit" on those machines typically take 3+ days to complete. I started Folding@Home on my PS3 this Friday after Standford's site came back on line. The PS3 can complete a work unit about every 8 hours! -- and at the same time it provides an excellent UI complete with sound --> way better than the PC application.

Hats off to Sony/Toshiba/IBM for the power of the Cell processor!

Bgmoon

Subject: cyber losses

Amused by Pat McFadden's cop-out comment: "As we make more services available online we need users to take the same basic precautions in using the internet as they would when making transactions in the high street,"

So, how many of us would frequent the high street if we had to wear a bullet proof vest, carry an automatic, always watch our backs, and expect each year that 10% of us doing the shopping would be mugged to the tune of 1000 sterling. Maybe stay at home.

The high street is safe because society has made it so - laws, police, the government taking responsibility for the safety of its citizens. Seems there's a big gap here and an attempt to avoid action. Too bad, as the internet is potentially a real money saver for society at large. But it's not being adopted as fully as it could be just due to the danger. Realistically who would put their banking or financial information at such risk? Who would order life threatening pills off the internet? The government should take responsibility for the cyber world that their citizens inhabit just as much as they do for the real world.

Dave

Subject: PS3 King of Folding@Home?

The fact that all those fancy cores in the Cell have a lot more free cycles to spare than PCs should be mentioned. How about reporting stories from a few different perspectives?

Necro

Subject: Cool

That's awesome that they're using it for a greater cause. As for the PC side, I wonder what the average pc is running? It would be interesting to see what a full blown gaming pc would do, compared to a PS3.... or at least one that's comparable in price, with the best equipment for the money.

Either way, it's a good use for the power.

Mataroo

Subject: Ps3 - mincing PCs not really

If you look at the number of GPUs versus TFLops - you find that the GPUs a punching a lit higher per unit than PS3s. There just aren't as many in use & you need a PC to run this. A dual core + ATI x1950 running CPU+GPU folding clients leaves a PS3 for dead.

The only remaining question is - are the calculations by GPUs limited compared to the PS3s.

As a folder, I have held off on an ATI upgrade for folding as the price keeps dropping on x1950 cards. The price will sink I hope in May07, or the R600/stream will be miles further ahead. The question will be folding TFlops per $.

Buying a PS3 for folding is obviously a better value equation than just another PC with C2D or Quad intel chip or low cost AMD64 x2.

Jon

Subject: PS3 Folding@Home is overrated

If you divide the total TFlops by the amount of active PS3's calculating, you get the number, 0.01588429 Per PS3.

However if you divide the total number of TFlops by the number of GPU's calculating, you get the number 0.0594315245 Per GPU.

This clearly shows the GPU's are 3.75 Times better at calculating it than the PS3.

Just some food for thought.

JKM

Subject: 3DFX

keep us updated on this! 3dfx back in the news is good, shame its quarellings over its remains, but hey! the name lives on!

where is PowerVR now? they had some pretty good tech as well!

PR Jones

Subject: Vista, Bittorrent & "Warez"

>These tools can be used illegal purposes. > >Do NOT make the mistake in tarring those of us >who use them within the law with the same as >those that don't. > >To do so is just ignorant. TH Doesn't it hurt when the truth slaps you in the face like a wet fish? I've got no idea on what percentage of people use Bittorrent for legitimate purposes, but i'll make one up just for some salt. Less than 3% Dan"

Well Dan, Blizzard Software uses BitTorrent to patch the millions of copies of WOW worldwide, Ubuntu recommends BitTotorrent to download the Live DVD they distribute Linux on. Guess only the criminals play WOW or use Linux. While I haven't checked, I'd guess that the legal titles mentioned in the INQ article also use BitTorrent to distribute patches without needing a server farm the size of Google's

BitTorrent is a technology just like FTP. To really crack down on illegal filesharing we need to ban networking. If computers are no longer able to connect & share files then the illegal filesharing problem will be solved :P

Fritz

Subject: Brit PS3 buyers get free 46-inch tellies

i went to several stores in brighton yesterday, argos, game and even the sony store in a local shopping center amongst others.

all of them had big signs urging people to hurry up in the windows, yet i didnt see a single customer actually buy a ps3.

i asked the people working for the shops i went and they all said directly or indirectly that they had not sold a lot of consoles at all. argos enployees even hinted that the ps3 would not be in their new catalogue as far as they know, so they might not sell the ps3 in future.

the sony representative in the sony center was overly enthusiastic. i noticed that he repeated several catch phrases to customers asking about the ps3, so i assume he nenorized the sony official selling points as all sony sales people should have.

the most interesting was regarding blue ray.

"the ps3 comes with a blue ray drive which means there will be a huge user base sooner or later forcing everybody to use it as a standard"

those werent his exact words, but pretty much what he said. it sounded pretty bold and arrogant which for me personally confirmed that its probabaly an official sony bullet point :)

i pray that hes wrong and sony fails. i dont even want to imagine what the upper management guys at sony unleash upon humanity once they feel more confident for having successfully forced their own standards upon everybody...

Sascha Krohn

Subject: You people are pathetic

Are you people pathetic? I see where one letter writer says you are and since I saw it published in The Inquirer, it must be true, right?

But where does that leave me, now that Larry Ellison isn't pronouncing any more? I mean, who am I going to blame things on so that doctor will keep prescribing the good stuff? I just earned crayon privileges and can't really afford to have them jerked by staff before I finish my income tax declarations.

So get your respective acts together people. Folks like me depend on you. Either that or light a fire under Ellison and get him to quit foaming at the mouth over Red Hat and start babbling again.

Jack

Subject: Killer NIC performing BT in hardware

When I first heard about Killer NIC, I thought it was silly. Who would pay that much money for a faster NIC when the NIC isn't the performance bottleneck?

However, if it can run Bit Torrent in hardware, THAT is something worth paying for.

Adam

Subject: Copycat

Can't people just off themselves in an at least somewhat original manner anymore? Webcam suicides are so 2001.

Brut

Subject: Sony PS3

It's 425 pounds for a machine that is of a lower spec than USA/Japan units which are also far cheaper. Once again...............

LOWER SPEC HIGHER PRICE!!!!

Norman

Subject: comments on bittorrent

as a comment on commenter Dan saying:

"I've got no idea on what percentage of people use Bittorrent for legitimate purposes, but i'll make one up just for some salt. Less than 3% "

I'll make up another statistic for you: how many people get through a single day without breaking ANY of his/her country's laws: Less than 0.8% (in the western world).

And that's an overestimate I venture to suggest.

W.

Subject: Dan's letter about Vista, Bittorrent & "Warez"

In reply to Dan's made-up statistic about how often bittorrent is used for legal content, I'd like to share my own made-up statistic. I bet 90% of the movie, TV show and music files that are stored on computers were copied illegally. Should we ban computers to preserve the all-important copyright law?

Jimsum

Subject: About PS3 crowned king of folding@home

This article was quite interesting to me, but I think you forgot one very important thing.

While PS3 is king of overall FLOPS calculated, you forgot to mention that the VPU client, for X1XX0 series of ATI VPU just crushed it on a "per donnator" basis. In fact, it took 31000 PS3 clients to get 494 TFLOPS, which equal to 0.01594 TFLOPS per PS3. On the other side, it took 774 ATI VPY to get 46 TFLOPS, which equal to 0.0594 TFLOPS. Do the math and you get 3.728 time more FLOPS per ATI VPU than you get from a PS3. My number are the most current ones as of now.

Now the important question... when will they release a client that works with all of my X1950Pro drivers so I can join in also?

Pierre Nadeau

Subject: PS3 Folding not as good as it seems.

The main reason the PS3 stats look so good is that many PC's are low end and single core machines.

In fact, an Intel Quad-Core using the latest Folding SMP client trounces the PS3. So much for "six great cores" on the PS3.

So if somehow 14,000 2.4Ghz QC systems were released at once and started running FAH, PS3 would look quite meager.

Yes I know its tough to compare a game console CPU to a top Intel CPU, but hey, Sony was the one saying it was a super computer!

Regards,
LTG