PS3 Client for Folding@Home Debuts, ATI GPU Version Soon

eliot1785 writes "Stanford's Folding@Home project is reporting that Sony debuted a Folding@Home client for the PlayStation 3 today in Germany. Researchers hope to use the power of the PS3's Cell processor to greatly expand the number of FLOPS of which their network is capable. F@H also announced today that they will release a client capable of running on ATI graphics processors. With these two new developments, F@H hopes to raise the total power of their distributed computing network to 1-10 petaflops. At the upper end of that target, the network would be faster than any current supercomputer, at least in terms of FLOPS." Reader TommyBear points out a collection of papers showing scientific advances made by the F@H researchers.

Hehe, PS3 cures cancer..

[PeterJK]

Nice news. I'm sure Sony will make lots of PR capital out of this ala the subject ;) Will this run on PS3 Linux or natively on the regular OS?

Give Me!

[Anonymous Coward]

x86 continues to get left in the computational dust.

I have a friend who is a very senior engineer at NVidia who has talked about how sick and tired they are of having the boat anchor that is x86 tied to their hardware. And that they would love to just cut out Intel and just run Windows/Linux right on their hardware. Microsoft obviously felt the same way when they dumped Intel and switch to PowerPC with the 360.

The PS3 is supposed to completely support keyboard and mouse, have a full version of Linux sitting on the harddrive, and support homebrew development. If you can download and install normal Linux apps...a graphics programmer dream come true. Even cooler are the plans of Sony coming out with higher end PS3 models with more RAM or Cell chips. A Linux box with a couple gigs of RAM and dual or quad Cells, oh baby.

GPU folding seems more interesting

[the_humeister]

There aren't much details on the ATI version. I'm guessing there's no Nvidia version yet because of the lack of IEEE 854 compliance in viedo cards, so they'd have to create a special version for each video card. But it's pretty neat what you can do with video cards these days besides play video games.

Re:Give Me!

[the_humeister]

I don't get it. Run Windows/Linux on Nvidia hardware? What general purpose CPUs does Nvidia make? Besides, if they're really so adamant about supporting other architectures, how come the only non-x86 drivers they make publicly available are for Itanium?

Re:Give Me!

[elrous0]

If you think for a second that Sony is going to "open up" the PS3 and just let you put whatever homebrew software you want on it, considering their record with the PSP, you're living in a dream world. Sony are control FREAKS. Their media-producing divisions are so scared at even the HINT that the system could be used for pirated games/media that they would rather take a financial loss than risk conceding even the slightest BIT of control of their system to homebrew coders.

If you want to see the kind of "Linux" you'll get on the PS3, look no further than the "Linux" they gave us on the PS2.

-Eric

Re:This makes less sense than ever!

[Overzeetop]

No, the cost of the computing cycles is worth more than the money to pure research. It may not be efficient, but the cost (both dollar and environmental) to buy/manufacture the processors and run them would be far greater than just running existing processors. Yes, there's the inherent inefficiency of distributed computing, but there is also sever inefficency in the process of donating, adminstrating, allocating, purchasing, monitoring, and replacing physical assets.

Put another way, is it cheaper to identify, buy, assemble, build, maintain, and power a computer, or is it cheaper to just power the computer, even if the power-Flop ratio might only be 1:0.5. Buildings and people are expensive when compared to energy costs.

Feeling Bad About Curing Cancer

[iamlucky13]

For no reason other than because I'm evil, I present to everyone the following back-of-the-napkin/sources-from-wikipedia analysis:

There was an article a while back about game console power consumption, but rather than dig that up, I'll assume a PS3 will average 200 Watts while cranking away on proteins. It's a good, round number. And I'll assume that I'd spend an hour per day actually playing games. Electricity in my area costs about $0.08/kW-hr.

0.2 kW * 23 hr/day * 365 day/year = 1679 kW-hours/year

1679 kW-hr/year * $0.08/kW-hr = $134.32/year for electricity to fold imaginary proteins. Ouch.

And for those worried about C02, 1679 kW-hr is 6,044,400 kJ, which is the energy equivalent to 46 gallons of gasoline (efficiency of conversion not accounted for). Alternately, assuming your electricity comes from a natural gas (CH4 ~ 891 kJ/mol) plant operating at 40% efficiency, one year of folding on your PS3 would release 746 pounds of CO2 (plus 1220 pounds of water vapor).

Gee, aren't numbers fun? In the fight to cure cancer, you actually end up breaking the bank and destroying the planet. That sucks.

I probably really shouldn't have posted that. I'm going to give all the idealistic, penny-pinching, obsessive-compulsive, environmentalist slashdot readers a complex.