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Science

Folding@Home Client's Performance Impact Measured 253

Posted by timothy from the drops-in-the-protein-bucket dept.
EconolineCrush writes "Trying to convince your boss to let you run Stanford's Folding@Home client on the machines at work? Here's an article that measures the performance impact of running the Folding@Home client that might help. The article examines the client's impact on the performance of business applications, games, workstation applications, and more. When set up correctly, the Folding@Home client can be run transparently in the background with only a negligible impact on system performance, which means your boss has one less reason to turn you down."
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Folding@Home Client's Performance Impact Measured More

Folding@Home Client's Performance Impact Measured

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  • And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aslagle ( 441969 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:08PM (#4642940)
    this article isn't going to convince him.
    • >> this article isn't going to convince him.

      probually not, but it might be able to confuse him enough so you can convince him of something else

      I mean look at all those numbers and graphs!

    • Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gazbo ( 517111 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:17PM (#4643011)
      But what about electricity usage? The recent case of the sysadmin who was fined a huge amount by the university for running a distributed client gave some figures:
      • Electricity usage increases by ~60% when spare cycles are used.
      • Logic switches in CPUs wear out up to ~15% sooner than if the idle cycles were left unused giving them time to cool down - we all know what a problem heat can be.
      • Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.

      OK, so I don't really believe the last one because it seems that most buildings have such variation in number of computers and people moving through etc. But that doesn't stop the other two for being equally accurate.
      • Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.

        [I'm a mechanical engineer and have done some airconditioning design work]

        Actually, computers can have a significant effect on air-conditioning services of buildings, particularly large computer labs which are in constant use (ie. computers are pumping out heat continually). I would not be at all surprised to find out that the running cost of airconditioning for a building would increase as a result of significantly more computers (or, as in this case, the computers pumping out significantly more heat).
        • I'll agree with this just from simple experiences I've had myself. I have an Athlon 2000 XP, which was the last of a line of chips before they shrunk down the die size. The fan it came with was not really even adequate to keep it within normal operating temperature.

          I used to leave my computer on 24/7 before I bought a hardware gateway for my roommates to share net access. If I left my bedroom door open at night, it was fine, but if I had closed it, I'd wake up and notice my room is abnormally warm.

          Since I've been leaving the computer off lately (using the nifty Hibernate feature), my room stays about the same temperature whether the door is open or closed..

          And that's just one PC. I recently purchased a kill-a-watt device. I think I will give it a run and see the power consumption difference when I'm running a number-crunching background program vs a regular idle... I'll post results if I remember (feel free to nag me if I don't) =)

      • Point two is ridiculous considering how long the lifespan of cpu's are, and even more so if you take into account the fraction of that lifespan that they are actually in use, on average.

      • # Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.

        How about the cost of processors dying because modern CPUs/cooling systems are not designed to run under full load full-time. We've had nasty problems with Athlons running these kinds of apps.

    • Exactly... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by theduck ( 101668 ) <theduck@n3.1415926ewsguy.com minus pi> on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:19PM (#4643032)

      ...but it might help you get to the truth about why you're not being allowed to do it.

      We all know that the vast majority of CPU cycles are wasted. If your boss is telling you that you can't do it because of the impact on the workstation, they're most likely lying to you. Most bosses either

      • don't understand the impact
      • don't trust you to be keeping the best interests of the business in mind when you load stuff like this onto company workstations
      • are afraid they'll get reamed if this stuff causes, or is blamed for causing, any problem with company IS resources

      Of course, addressing these issues with your boss is far from easy, but if proving to them that workstation performance is not the issue forces them to raise the real issue then at least you have a chance.

      • Except the cycles aren't being "wasted" - they're just not happening. The majority of modern processors will crank themselves down when not being loaded. This reduces electricity usage (and often noise - I can tell when the CPU usage on my box goes up as the fans start kicking in). In the current economic climate I would have thought bosses would be very hostile to an idea which costs them money, however worthy the cause may be.

        • Except the cycles aren't being "wasted" - they're just not happening.

          Well, now, that depends on what I meant by "wasted", doesn't it. IMO, they're wasted if they're doing nothing ;).

          If they're really worried about the electricity cost of running those extra cycles, let them tell you that so you can fully realize that your boss is telling you not to do something you're interested in so the company can save under $50/year [anu.edu.au]. And though they might not be swayed by the worthy cause, they should be swayed by inexpensive ways to keep their employees happy, since happy employees are more likely to be productive and more than make up for that cost with increased productivity and improved retention.


          • $50 a year? Ouch. At a conservative estimate that would be well over $1M for our firm if everyone ran it.

            As it happens my management haven't made any specific ruling about such things, but they do have a general "don't run anything you installed yourself" get out clause. Of course for most stuff that's ignored, but it's always there if they need to fire me for something :) I prefer not to hand them the ammunition to shoot me with!

      • Re:Exactly... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Monkelectric ( 546685 )
        Obviously, you've never been a boss. Why expose yourself to security, legal, or financial risks with no potential gain? YOUR boss could be fired or sanctioned for authorizing software. Those are exactly the thoughts running through your bosses head. It may be short sighted, but that's business.

        • Of course they're considering the risks, that's part of their job. But there are potential gains. Namely, morale. And there are ways to maintain IT worker morale even without permitting potentially hazardous applications on the network. Namely, telling the truth. Why? because it shows that you're being treated as an adult and builds trust between management and those being managed.

          Remember, the purpose of the article was to show that folding@home has a negligible impact on the performance of the workstation for other applications. If this is the reason you were given for not being allowed to place the application on company workstations then your boss either doesn't understand the way these applications work or doesn't trust you with the truth. By refuting the reason given, you at least get to find out which it is.

      • Re:Exactly... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tmark ( 230091 )
        if proving to them that workstation performance is not the issue forces them to raise the real issue then at least you have a chance.

        Why should bosses have to justify declining a request like this to employees ? Considering that:
        1. there IS a performance hit, that might just be smaller than previously thought,
        2. distributed clients WILL result in more energy usage, heat generation, and reduced component life,
        3. employees WILL use some of their paid-for time installing the client, and
        4. the company may suffer losses if a program crashes, perhaps compromising the integrity of data on the computer
        5. the company will NOT receive any direct benefit


        Aren't the above reasons good enough reasons why employees shouldn't be feeding their hobby and pet interests while being paid ? Even if all the above except 5) were wrong, isn't 5) enough that bosses shouldn't have to worry about justifying their decisions to people who are being paid to work on other projects ?

        • You're right. Bosses don't have to justify anything. But if you want to know why, IMO, it's in their best interest to treat their workers like adults (i.e. play it straight with them and trust them unless shown that they cannot be trusted) and even let them indulge their interests as long as the costs are not too high, please read my responses to the other three replies to my post.

    • this article isn't going to convince him.

      Exactly, even if the article is technically sound, factual, and clear. Management doesn't work on these principles. :-)

      Seriously though, I cannot even run Linux on my desktop, because it is not "company approved software". I work for a big company, can you tell? When I even hint at anything Linux or Open Source, I get an immediate brick wall. No matter how logical or technically fantastic a solution, if it ain't "company approved", it ain't happening.

  • You would be running the application on THIER machines, NOT yours. Ypu boss would have EVERY right to say NO.

  • another similar program (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MoceanWorker ( 232487 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:10PM (#4642958) Homepage
    United Devices [ud.com] is another company that does grid computing for cancer research. Which leads me to ask the following question (this may be a stupid question, but I'm bio illiterate)..

    Wouldn't protein folding have some sort of similarity in finding a cure for cancer?
    • And the best thing with UD is: You get 1gig worth of Data from EasyNews [easynews.com] for every 15 CPU Days! :)
    • Doubtful. Other diseases, perhaps- prions and Alzheimer's are the ones I usually hear mentioned in relation to protein folding studies. Cancer is too broad a category, and I don't think most cancers involve misfolded proteins. Mutated proteins, certainly, but you need to take an entirely different computational approach to deal with those.
      • It wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with "misfolded" proteins.

        Cell signalling has everything to do with tertiary protein structures and everything to do with controlling the life cycles of cells - i.e. finding new (or more specific/effective) approaches to - for example - cancer therapy.

        Drug specificity is gained through precise drug-receptor interactions. Receptors are proteins. The more exactly you know the receptor structure, the more specifically you can design your drug. Being able to predict different tertiary protein structures (foldings) from only the known DNA sequence mutations can only be A Good Thing, and having a crapload of computers around the world doing part of the job for free is nice.

        Though I'm not gonna participate unless I get royalties from any patents/drugs that may come out of all this... ;)
        • Being able to predict different tertiary protein structures (foldings) from only the known DNA sequence mutations can only be A Good Thing, and having a crapload of computers around the world doing part of the job for free is nice.

          But that's currently impossible, and it's doubtful when, if ever, doing this on computer will ever replace crystallography- especially given the pace at which crystallography improves. Folding@Home isn't even trying to do what you're talking aobut. They're investigating the dynamics of protein folding using a small peptide system. They already know the tertiary structure. Some groups have gotten good results in de novo simulations of protein folding, but nothing remotely near what you'd need to do computational drug design. You need high-res crystal structures for that.

          There are some groups that are doing drug-receptor studies using known structures (also with distributed computing; see this [childhooddiseases.org] for example). I don't know how accurate these will be, but there's a sounder baseisfor it than trying to do this from sequence info alone.
    • "similarity" in finding a cure for cancer. post a reply or email me to clarify, b/c I think I can answer your question.

      a quick bio summary:

      There are about 35,000 genes in the human genome, which means there are >35,000 different kinds of proteins in our bodies over our lifetime. Each of these proteins has a 3-dimensional structure that is nearly impossible to predict from genetic information alone. The 3-dimensional structure of a protein, along with its composition, determines the functionality of the protein. Determining the 3D structure of a protein and discovering the steps necessary for a peptide chain to wriggle up into a mature protein is called the "Protein Folding Problem"

      In many kinds of Cancer, genetic mutations have occurred that cause either a problem with the way a protein folds up and thus changed its functionality; or a mutation has occurred such that the genetic instructions have changed, causing some proteins to be made more or less often than usual. Usually what happens is a whole lot of things get changed before cancer is diagnosed.

  • It Would Be Nice If... (Score:5, Informative)

    by zentec ( 204030 ) <zentec AT gmail DOT com> on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:10PM (#4642961)
    ...my completed results could be sent.

    I ran their Linux client on a couple machines and it ran ok, didn't impact things too badly (remember "nice"?). But when it went to upload the finished results, it could never connect to the server that takes the finished data.

    After two weeks of that, I pulled the client down. No one bothered to respond to my email, one person pointed to a discussion group for assistance, but since I'm already being overly generous with my time, it was more bother than it was worth.

    • Re:It Would Be Nice If...[solution] (Score:4, Informative)

      by hfastedge ( 542013 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:18PM (#4643016) Homepage Journal
      They have a message board (phpbb!) and not only is there a knowledgable community, but the admins usually comment.

      http://forum.folding-community.org/
    • I had a similar problem... the OS X screensaver version is buggy as hell, but nobody over there seems to care much about fixing it. they just assume that i won't mind having an app which crashes the pref window.
    • I think this has to do with the fact that they aren't (smart?) enough to use HTTP and port 80 for uploading/downloading data, like Seti@Home... I tried it on my work machines too, and no go... I didn't bother to look up the ports and all, but I know our firewall lets any HTTP traffic through port 80, and it refuses to work on any computer i've tried it on the inside...

      Quite a shame, as I have quite a few machines here and pretty much free reigh over installing whatever I want on my machines...

      I might consider trying one of those SocksCap/HTTP Tunnelling systems someday if I get the energy... For now, I'm just keeping my seti@home going, which it always has done without me ever needing to do much more than enter my email address...

      If you want a largest volunteer base from number crunching clients, I suggest keeping your software as versatile and compatible as possible, and make it smart enough to self-discover solutions to problems by itself... Something so simple as using HTTP to transfer work packets seems obvious to me...

  • Hello... (Score:2, Funny)

    by l33t j03 ( 222209 )
    Hi boss, I was hoping to run some software on the network here.

    Whats that? Oh, no, it doesn't have anything to do with work.

    Yes, it will have an adverse effect on the network performance but this web site I read claims it won't be all that bad.

    Oh really? I should get the fuck back to work and quit fucking around with bullshit worthless personal stuff on company time or you'll fire the shit out of me?

    Yes, thank you sir, back to work sir.

  • Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PseudoThink ( 576121 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:11PM (#4642965)
    Don't get me wrong, I think distributed computing projects are great, especially those focused on legitimately useful research. However, running a distributed computing client on a machine at work will likely cause it to consume more electricity. A Pentium 4 has a maximum power consumption in the range of 65W, no? So every computer you install this on is like leaving a 60W lightbulb on 24-7, year-round. If you do this with many computers, I think that may add up to a nontrivial expense that you're essentially stealing from the company, no? Just playing devil's advocate...

    • Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kennylives ( 27274 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:25PM (#4643079) Journal
      No. The electricity used is not the issue within a company. The machines are on 24x7 anyway; the business has alreay accepted that cost of doing business.

      What many businesses do not accept is the security and liability implications of running outside, unapproved code on their machines, expecially production boxen. "Who supports it when it crashes?", "What assurance do we have that it's not a trojan, gathering data?", "Why should we pay for their IT needs?" - these are just a few of the questions that a reasonably intellegent IT manager should/would be asking.

      Of course, after all that, there's still the argument that "They're our machines, not yours. That's why." There's no easy way to answer that one and win.

      • Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "They're our machines, not yours. That's why." There's no easy way to answer that one and win.

        Folding@Home can be used for advertisement purposes. Start a team for your company, including a link to your webpage. Just something that'll help a company get noticed. I've checked out links for random teams myself.

        Having said that, I used to run F@H on my boxes at home, and one of my processors eventually failed, so I don't run it anymore, especially not at work.

      • Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:44PM (#4643175) Journal
        No. The electricity used is not the issue within a company. The machines are on 24x7 anyway; the business has alreay accepted that cost of doing business.

        Wrong. Particularly with larger corporate purchases, some buys calculate energy usage based on 9-10 hours a day on, and the remainder on low-power mode, and use that in their decision making.
      • No. The electricity used is not the issue within a company. The machines are on 24x7 anyway;

        Maybe where you work, but now where I work. We power donw every night. of course this is an NT network, so there's not that much chance of it staying up 24/7 anyway ;-)

        Wonder how much energy is wasted each year in the US by machines being left on all the time? More proof that *nix is destroying our planet!!
      • The machines are on 24x7 anyway; the business has alreay accepted that cost of doing business.

        I've hooked an ammeter to the AC power cord on my Athlon system. It sucks down about 20 more watts when the CPU is under load than when it is idle. It makes sense that you would use more power when the logic units, memory cells and bus signals are doing more work.

        OTOH, nobody ever seems to care when most of the employees leave their big hot CRTs turned 24x7. Each of these is wasting 50 to 100W of power. Look at most any office building at night; you can see all of the monitors that people are too lazy to flip off.

        • Damn straight -- I'm tired of lazy people that don't consider the impact of their actions.

          Making a fuss and planting trees on the weekend is great, you should also carry that presence of mind into your everyday actions.

          Turn off your monitor when you leave for the day.
          Don't not running hot water if you're not using it.
          Thinking twice about having ten old computers on 24x7 in your house. It might be cool, but maybe DNS doesn't need it's own server (whoa, really?). Two one 24x7 is probably more than enough, unless you have some special need.

          Sure there may be exceptions to these things -- that's fine. Just be conscious of your actions. Decide to leave the monitor on, don't just be lazy about it. (same thing goes for speeding, yelling at people, getting drunk, etc. They may or may not be bad, but decide to do them -- don't just fall into it.)

          Maybe I'm some Berkeley nut-case, but usually when I leave work at night, I go by and turn off all of the monitors on my way out. People sometimes talk to me about it and I give them my shpeel, but when they leave the next day, it's more of the same. Is it too much for people to think about these things?

    • This is actually the reason I stopped doing distributed.net. Not only the power consumption of the Athlons never being idles, but in my computer room it is hard enough to control the heat and A/C costs a lot.

      Seeing your Athlons near operating maximums all the time has got to wear on the equipment. I started seeing instabilities with RAM (which I had to replace at a cost of a few hundred dollars).

      When the Processor is idle most of the time the system runs significantly cooler.

      Brian Macy
    • If you're running a desktop machine, then yes, you'll burn more power using CPUburner@Home than not using it. The typical concerns that businesses have had are usually "but you're using *our* computer resources for *somebody else's* project" (not that they mind that gorgeous fractal-growing screensaver) or perhaps security or computer support, but usually if you explain it nicely, and if it's one of the non-commercial versions, as opposed to the "win prizes running your boss's computer" or "let us resell your spare cycles in return for nothing much" projects.

      However, if your computer is a laptop that you run on batteries for a significant fraction of the time, be careful - NiMH batteries really don't like to power CPU-burners, and as they age, they tend to fail in ugly ways. I used to have a one-hour train commute, and my laptop simply did *not* like running GIMPS. Also, even if I turned it off when I was running on batteries, it slowed down the recharge process significantly when I plugged back in again, and I don't think it liked that either.

  • Usefull? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ashran ( 107876 )
    No!
    Its pretty common knowledge that running IDLE Tasks consume nearly no CPU time. Of course the overall performance will be SLIGHTLY lower because of context switching and the time it takes for the idle process to finish its time slice (no it wont preempt after 1 op or something - will do a few usecs of processing till the OS notices something else has to be done)...
    The real question, which hasnt been answered on that article is how much network bandwith does it consume? I'm running folding@home on a few machines [stanford.edu] here [einsurance.de] but never really had the time to check how much of our network bandwith its taking away...
    Hopefully not that much .. slows down the pr0n downloads =)

    /wave
    ps.: awake for 32 hours, this posting might not make sense at all ;)
    • The real question, which hasnt been answered on that article is how much network bandwith does it consume?

      If you're not using your computers, it doesn't matter, now, does it? None of the programs (folding, distributed, that awful eccp client) would use as much as a guy surfing on the net, except maybe seti, and even that is just bursting, not continuous. Most of them seem to use shorthand for "uploading" results anyway, the only big use is when they download new info.

      Your concern should be power consumption and heat production, probably. Especially if you're using Transmetas or laptops, etc.

      • Re:Usefull? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Ashran ( 107876 )
        > If you're not using your computers, it doesn't matter, now, does it?
        Yes! Some pay per bandwith used, and even if its flat, 100 PC's on a corporate network could generate some neat network traffic too.
        I think my UD client downloads ~600k for each Work Unit ..
        Thats not much, but adds up ..
      • If you're not using your computers, it doesn't matter, now, does it?
        But if other people in your company are using their computers, you don't want to take away a significant chunk of their bandwidth, do you? You also don't want to run up your company's utility bill if you'd otherwise leave your computer off when you're not at work.

        Your concern should be power consumption and heat production, probably. Especially if you're using Transmetas or laptops, etc.
        Absolutely. I don't even like to leave my laptop at the Windows login screen because it uses 100% of the CPU time and makes the cooling fan some on within a few minutes.

  • Good Choice (Score:2, Interesting)

    by natron 2.0 ( 615149 )
    Folding@home is a good client to use, it is so versitle. You can run it on nearly every OS out there and like the article states it is pretty much transparent. Plus it is easy to hide on a PC as a service. It seems to run on nearly no resources. It would be the smart choice for anyone. 'Nuff said.

  • Just maybe.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JPelorat ( 5320 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:14PM (#4642991)
    ...there's more than one reason it's called "Folding@HOME" and not "Folding@WORK". Hmm?

    If you can't get permission the first time around, repeated pestering will not help your case.

  • Performance impacts are negligable.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NitroWolf ( 72977 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:14PM (#4642997)
    It's the increased power consumption I'd be worried about in his (the bosses) position.

    While 1 CPU running at full throttle 24/7 isn't going to make that big of a jump in the power bill. 500 CPUs... 1000, etc... will create a huge increase in power consumption over a long enough time frame.

    I fully support distributed projects like Folding@home, SETI, etc... and run them on my machines, both at home and at work, but the power consumption is a legitimate concern.

    I believe someone did a (unprofessional) investigation of the SETI@home debacle when it first came out, and came to the conclusion that something on the order of 100 or 1000 barrels of oil per day were wasted on checking over the same data repeatedly ... which SETI@home didn't bother to inform people that their data distribution method wasn't exactly working. (Everyone was checking over the same exact patch of sky 24/7 for weeks). That's what initially turned me off to SETI@home, and I haven't been back since.

    Regardless ... it applies to Folding@home as well. Thousands and thousands of CPUs, running floored will eat up a considerable amount of power. Is it wasted? No, I don't think so, as long as the distributed computing applications are worthwhile and advance our knowledge.

    • Moreover, which cause is more worthy of my CPU's cycles? Finding out that there may be life in some star system millions of light-years away or possibly finding a cure for cancer or HIV. Perhaps we should concentrate on lifeforms on this planet before we try to find lifeforms on other ones.

  • Factor in power usage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Servo ( 9177 ) <dstringf@noSPam.tutanota.com> on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:17PM (#4643007) Journal
    Since most of these types of apps rely on "spare" CPU cycles, they basically keep the machine running at 100% cpu at all times. This causes the system to pull more power. Not only does this increase the electric bill, but it also keeps the temperature high all the time. This could have an impact on AC cooling costs as well, not to mention CPU life.

    To me, that's the biggest deterrant from using it. I had been running the UnitedDevices client on my home computer. Since my computer ran all the time, I figured what the heck. But lately I've been trying to cut back on my power consumption. By leaving the UD client running 24/7, its like leaving an extra light bulb on, power wise.
    • Since most of these types of apps rely on "spare" CPU cycles, they basically keep the machine running at 100% cpu at all times. This causes the system to pull more power. Not only does this increase the electric bill, but it also keeps the temperature high all the time. This could have an impact on AC cooling costs as well,

      Well, some of us need to heat up our homes with electricity, at least during the winter. And your CPU is obsolete long before it dies.

      not to mention CPU life.

      Todays CPUs are obsolete before the warranty expires anyway. :)

      • Todays CPUs are obsolete before the warranty expires anyway. :)

        Obsolete != useless.

      • True, I use electricity to heat up my home as well. However, I spend more money on cooling. Maybe if I lived in the polar regions, it wouldn't be so bad.

        CPU's are "obselete" before you get them home from the computer store. Side note: Don't buy the latest and greatest computer for regular use. It's a waste of money.

        Most businesses buy "average" computer systems. They aren't designed to withstand being run 24/7 at max load. All the large scale businesses will usually replace their systems every 3 years. But small and many medium sized companies will not replace systems unless absolutely required. My dad runs a company of about 10 employee's. Everybody either has a computer or a terminal hooked up to a mini. I don't think he's bought a "new" PC for his office in the last 5 to 10 years. What he has does what he needs. He buys refurbished computers if he needs to add on. Not only is that good business sense, but its also good environmentally speaking.
    • Does anyone have any links to research showing that using a CPU at 100% workload will decrease it's life?

      It seems to me that alternating between 0% and 100% utilization repeatedly would do more damage, since it would cause the greatest differential in temperature, thereby causing the silicon to expand and contract repeatedly, perhaps eventually leading to a weak circuit line to open.

      • Overheating is a well known problem. Its not so much that its running at 100% that's at issue, its sustained running at high temps. If you have better/best cooling possible, then I don't see much reason to be concerned. But most budget and "business" computers aren't designed to deal with the high temps that you'd get from say, running a gaming box.

        You run risk of burning the CPU out, or at least making it flaky. (Assuming its getting too hot)

        This is a risk, not a definite issue.

  • Other employer concerns (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shadow2097 ( 561710 ) <shadow2097@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:19PM (#4643028)
    I was asked to evaluate several distributed computing projects last year. The company wanted to do something other than just waste electricity with idle CPUs. However, I wasn't asked to investigate only client machine performance so much as I was asked for data on bandwidth consumption.

    My company is moderately sized (~140 employees) and uses a large amount of bandwidth on a near constant basis. While our data does not need to flow in real time, any disruption in our network can cause quite an uproar directed at the IT department, of which I am a member.

    While the data transfers involved with projects like SETI@Home and Folding@Home are small in comparison to our normal traffic, my superiors were concerned that if many connections were made to the central server simultaneously, there would be a noticable drop in performance.

    I think this bandwidth issue, and not client performance, stands as the major roadblock to more corporate participantion.

    -Shadow

    • my superiors were concerned that if many connections were made to the central server simultaneously, there would be a noticable drop in performance.

      Distributed.net have a proxy server [distributed.net] you can run to avoid having squillions of connections being made to some external server. It makes it easy to produce stats for your participating clients too :)
    • Seti@Home packets are what, 700 kB? 700 kB * 140 / 1024 = 96 megabytes . If your computers turn around an average of 2 work units per day you get 192 megabytes per day. If you stagger the installations (which you will have to do anyway), you're likely to end up with a load of maybe 50 kB/s extra traffic on your network (rough guess; if you actually could distribute it perfectly it would be about 2300 bytes per second). Hm, I can maybe see that as a problem.

  • software/application compatibility is the reason (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:20PM (#4643038)
    i work for a canadian federal government department, and the main reason software like this is a huge no-no is mainly because it could have adverse effects on other in-house developed applications that are mission-critical to our clients needs. extensive testing is done only with "standard" applications that every user has.

    we learned this the hard way when we thought installing w2k service pack 2 was a good idea when sp1 was the department standard. one of our in-house apps was crashing at random times and the suits upstairs were starting to ask questions. luckily this didnt come down on us as another problem was the cause of the crash's, and saved us a world of grief
    • Without wishing to sound rude you could attempt to write applications that don't fall over at the slightest push. If your in-house apps can't co-exist with low impact software like seti/folding@home then the problem lies with your coders, not the distributed processing applications.

      We've had this problem with the GUI coders (VB and .NET monkeys) at our place. The stuff they produce will crash at the slightest provocation (such as being installed on the 'wrong' partition!). They then try to push the blame on to users for having 'non-standard' configurations (like more than one hard-drive). If someone can't write portable, maintainable, reliable, efficent code they should find a job that demands less technical skill - like flipping burgers.

      By comparison the seti/folding@home clients are written to be portable (especially folding@home) and have been tested on many thousands of different computers, reliablity at the users end is more indicative of in-house issues.

    • You're joking, right? You're comparing an OS upgrade like SP2 to running another application on your PC? Microsoft's half-assed "service-packs" aren't just software programs, and they do tend to fuck everything in the OS. Running other apps concurrently with whatever you have developed is a completely different scenario.

  • Performance impact is the least of your worries (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kombat ( 93720 ) <kevin@swanweddingphotography.com> on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:22PM (#4643053)
    Managers and IT admins don't decline this sort of thing over something as pedantic as performance degradation - they decline it over much bigger issues, including but not limited to

    • Risk of virus/worm infection
    • Risk of inadvertently exposing a security hole
    • Risk of compromising proprietary information
    • Decreased employee productivity over installing/watching the client
    • Lost time/money if this thing crashes an employee's machine, just as they were putting the finishing touches on the customer presentation due in 20 minutes


    Does anyone really think that the reason these things are being rejected by management is because of performance???

  • tax break? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by shaolin9 ( 601607 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:24PM (#4643072)
    Going off of the point that actually running these distributed programs are not free. I think these programs should allow companies to be given some sort of tax credit or break.

    This would definitely speed up development, and provide an incentive to the companies with massive amounts of unused computers usually left on anyways during the evenings. At least at my work place this is the case.

  • What's with the politically incorrect map? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jonr ( 1130 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:33PM (#4643116) Homepage Journal
    I refuse to participate in a project that puts USofA in the center of the world map [tilveran.is]. Obviously, these are meant to degrade us who live outside this country.
    Bring me back the good old Alaska-to-Siberia map.

  • Folding@Home with Google Toolbar (Score:5, Informative)

    by codeonezero ( 540302 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:34PM (#4643122)
    I don't know if this is widely known yet but at work we have the google toolbar installed on our windows 2k workstations.

    The MIS guy at least approved their use.

    Last week, I saw that the Google Toolbar had self updated, and one of the new features was the ability to opt in for participation in the Folding@Home project through the use of the Google Toolbar.

    It appears that at the time this feature is limited to only a select clients. Nevertheless I sent a request to the MIS guy about it, and if I could enable it. He had no issues with it. (Aka run it if you want)

    Perhaps if the MIS/IT person already lets you use the Google Toolbar on the Windows machine, then they would probably be more trusting of running Folding@Home through the Google Toolbar.

    I haven't noticed any significant slow downs using regular mode, and in any case you can switch between regular and conservative modes. Conservative mode running when you're not using the computer.

    Also although I dont have the link at the moment handy (at home on my Mac :-) There is also mention of being able to participate in other such distributed computing projects in the future.

    • Last week, I saw that the Google Toolbar had self updated, and one of the new features was the ability to opt in for participation in the Folding@Home project through the use of the Google Toolbar.
      And that got disabled sharpish here! When running IE inside VMWare the Google Toolbar idles away using 'spare' resources. But they're not - it causes VMWare to hog things on the Linux side...

  • What about Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AaronW ( 33736 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:36PM (#4643128) Homepage
    The report covers Windows, but I want to know about the effect on Linux. A couple of years ago I ran Seti@home on some of the Solaris boxes where I worked. Even though it was nice -19, it had a very noticable impact on system performance. My solution was a script that monitored the system load and killed the client whenever the server was busy doing real work.

    In Windows, I think there are scheduling classes such that a low priority idle task will not receive any cycles if a normal priority task needs to run.

    -Aaron

  • Whoa. If only I was so lucky... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:38PM (#4643144)
    A Duron 1.2GHz with 256 MB of RAM is a low end system? That's a pretty decent low-end system of *now*, but what about using a machine that's 2 years old or more? You know, those sub 1-GHz machines and 128MB of RAM (if you're lucky)? Man, that low-end system is far faster than what I use at work (and what most people use).

    What about memory consumption? Having to hit the swapfile more often because its running would slow down a compile job, or heck, just the apparent responsiveness of the system. If opening a document takes 10 seconds longer because the system has to swap, I'd say that has a far more annoying impact than the miniscule extra CPU resources...
  • The problem with this is, there is no way that the wear on the machines is also "negligible." An average business workstation probably has something like 1% CPU usage average each day. When you bump that up to 100% (and drive and memory a related amount), it will shorten the computer's life.

    This is why volunteer distributed computation has been primarily popular among academics, students, and low-wage tech workers; people who aren't financially responsible for the computers to which they have access.
    • I wasn't aware that solid-state electronics wear out faster if more electrons run through them. Perhaps you can elaborate on the exact reasons why a CPU being used more often would cause "wear and tear".

  • You'd run this stuff on a production system? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:52PM (#4643241)
    True story, with details ignored / changed to protect the guilty:

    A production system handling multi-million dollar transactions began to slow and crash for absolutely no reason we could fathom. As each degradation of the system was costing the company involved tens of thousands of dollars at a shot, the president and other higher-ups were growing quite irate about the difficulty and wanted it fixed NOW.

    A few days of frustrating troubleshooting by a team of techs discovered the problem: Someone had installed SETI@Home on the production system and it was interfering with other operations. Having incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars of opportunity-cost losses in those few days, the 'professional' responsible for that stupidity was thrown out on their ass the instant they were identified as the culprit.

    The moral of the story: If you're paid to be a professional, be one. Use business systems for _business_ and if you want to run fun stuff, do it on your own time and on your own dime.
    • I am curious, was this Unix or WinNT/2K?

      I am aware of some scheduler issues with Win2K where even a low priority task isn't kicked out immediately.

      I do know of some people who use their spare cycles for in-house work such as financial institutions modeling portfolios. As a sanctioned application it seems to work well and in any case comes in over night.

  • I thought @home already folded! [internet.com]

  • Why I would never let my employees run this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tuxlove ( 316502 ) on Monday November 11, 2002 @12:55PM (#4643263)
    It's a security risk, plain and simple. Running this on any company machine containing files that we care about, or that is behind the firewall, is too much of a risk to even consider.

    Overly anal? No. All it takes is for someone to discover a buffer overrun in the application, create an exploit, and poison our DNS to get data from their site instead of folding@home's site. This is perfectly possible, and should it happen, could be devastating.

    I don't care enough about folding@home to risk company security. The CPU cycles we would have spent crunching data for them are not an issue, especially if the cycles would have been wasted anyway. I would gladly spend those if there were no risk.

  • Patent rights? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In today's dismal health arena, I wonder what the patent rights are on the results of such computing. They are using our CPU resources to find an answer and, even though the results might be published academically, some pharm company is going to take them and make a few over-priced drugs.

    Perhaps someday I won't even be able to afford the drugs that are a result of my CPU cycles. That's not to discourage donating cycles, but it is something to think about.
  • Your boss doesn't know that it poses no risk to his property, and he is not obligated to listen to arguments to that effect. To him, taking the risk offers no return, so it makes no sense.

  • Tax deductable (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kangolo ( 95008 )
    Is the donation of time / resources to this considered tax deductable? That might sway a few PHBs.

  • IP issues? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DraconicFae ( 600508 )
    A bit of a stupid question I guess, but does anyone know what the IP ramifications of this project are? I don't really want the spare cycles of my machine to help someone get a patent to lock the general public out of benefitting from this biz. I checked the page but I find no mention of IP, which hopefully means it's public material, but I'm not sure.

    • Re:IP issues? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Big Mark ( 575945 )
      That's why I use Prime 95 [mersenne.org]. It's designed to find hideously large prime numbers, so while not as useful to the human race as the biochem ones my spare cycles aren't going to be making anyone else rich. And I'm a mathematics geek, so it's pleasing in that sense as well.

      Anyone who doesn't use a cycle-sucker is scum. Think about it - how much power is wasted through PC idle time? How much money does that wasted time cost you, through your power bills? How many people will die today for the want of a few pence to buy some food or water?

      Distributed computing helps me sleep at night.

  • text-only version (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kEnder242 ( 262421 )
    What about the graphical version?

    I prefer it over the text version. Its nice to look at and goes in my taskbar, but sometimes it will prevent 3d apps (games) from runing on my box. It seems to steal the focus from the games.

    GF3 on dual p3 900's win2ksp3

  • Debian Unstable (Score:2, Informative)

    by bytor4232 ( 304582 )
    Folding@Home won't run on any of my Debian Unstable machines. It segfaults shortly after execution. Haven't had the time to track it down yet. Right now I am only running Folding on Debian Testing.
  • The #1 reason your boss, or your IT dept, has for turning you down has nothing to do with performance, and everything to do with stability (Talking about Windows here)

    Simply, us IT folk generally don't want anyone running anything they don't NEED to run on a daily basis on their computer, period, because every additional thing adds complexity.

    It's a stability and a security risk.

  • If you can't already explain process priority to your boss, you're fired.

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