Poll: Do you participate in any Distributed Computing projects?

[MacRumors]

Vote: Poll: Do you participate in any Distributed Computing projects? (http://www.macpolls.com/?poll_id=134&ref=forums.macrumors.com)

[howard]

go folding@home! and may i say this is an awesome poll

[FelixDerKater]

Folding. I see no point in wasting my processor cycles on a search for aliens. We have more important problems here on Earth. If you're not helping, make yourself useful by running Folding@Home.

[eric_n_dfw]

I've been Bovine crackin' for years. (Now if they'd just release that crunch-vec core for the new 72 bit client!)

[-hh]

Originally posted by FelixDerKater
Folding. I see no point in wasting my processor cycles on a search for aliens. We have more important problems here on Earth. If you're not helping, make yourself useful by running Folding@Home.

Well, as a SETI@home contributor, I have to admit that the reason I got started was a combination of the fact that they were the first, coupled with a friendly competition between myself and a rabid pro-Windows/anti-Mac manager that I used to work for.

And while I'm not necessarily disenclined to also help out folding@home, I personally find their Intellectual Property Rights disclosure and protections to be legally very weak and not-up-to-snuff. Until they improve their data protections, I won't contribute to them.


-hh

[jethroted]

I got 4 computers running round the clock cruching those numbers for folding at home. I think it's great.

[Zaren]

On my Sparc at work, I'm running seti and rc5. On my Mac at home, I just installed seti, after getting tired of waiting for a new Mac rc5 client. I can't run folding at home... at home... because there's no os9 client (my cobblejob FrankenMac won't accept an osX install; seems to be a problem with the OF on the g4 cpu upgrade).

[iShater]

There should be another choice, "More than one of the above!".

I'm running SETI and Folding.

[eric_n_dfw]

If you run more than one at a time, you are getting 1/2 (or so) the output of each. How do you get braging rights that way?!?! :D

[bennetsaysargh]

i am totally clueless on what these things do
if someone could please explain this for me i would be grateful

[jethroted]

check this link first.
http://folding.stanford.edu/
`
It's a way to make your idle computer a working piece of scientific equipment.
Everyone here at macrumors should be doing this and make sure to put 3446 as your team # so that the work your computer does counts towards the macrumors team!

[crazytom]

I tried out both folding and seti and have to admit I was very disappointed in both of their ideas of what a 'screensaver' is. They both put up a box and has solid, stagnant colors....how does that save my screen? (yes, I'm nitpicking)

Besides that, I've been doing SETI for the last couple of months...it seems to be a limited project that will come to some conclusion in this next year, then I'll switch to folding.

My question is: how do the top end P4's compare to a Dual GHz mac? On SETI, at least, (as much as I hate to admit it), a fast P4 crunches a 'unit' in 1/2 to 1/3 the time that my Dual GHz will.

[FelixDerKater]

A P4 will stomp a Mac in folding. There is no optimization. They should add AltiVec optimization if they want Mac systems to be used to their full potential.

[howard]

Originally posted by crazytom

My question is: how do the top end P4's compare to a Dual GHz mac? On SETI, at least, (as much as I hate to admit it), a fast P4 crunches a 'unit' in 1/2 to 1/3 the time that my Dual GHz will.

well i don't know about on seti but on folding@home we have dual processor scripts so that your dual can crunch two work units. so if the p4 crunches 1/2 the time as the dual, then maybe it would be the same if your using both the processors. i'm not for sure but i doubt seti is a dp program

[Rower_CPU]

F@H for me. :)

Here's hoping this poll gets some new people interested in joining the MR DC effort. :D

[crazytom]

Originally posted by howard
well i don't know about on seti but on folding@home we have dual processor scripts so that your dual can crunch two work units. so if the p4 crunches 1/2 the time as the dual, then maybe it would be the same if your using both the processors. i'm not for sure but i doubt seti is a dp program

SETI does use both processors. It's load, when I'm not doing much else, takes up 150% of processor and pretty much leaves 20% open at all times. It's not totally unobtrusive, either. When I'm doing large video conversion I usually quit the SETI background process so my work gets done 20% faster.

[-hh]

Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
i am totally clueless on what these things do
if someone could please explain this for me i would be grateful

Essentially what they do is to use your computer's idle time to do "useful" work.

All of these projects basically work the same way:

1) A Host computer somewhere (which holds the "big job") divides the job up into a whole bunch of small, discrete & effectively stand-alone jobs.

2) Your PC logs in, and asks the Host for some work to do.

3) The Host transfers a data packet to your PC. Think of this like a Teacher giving a Student a take-home homework assignment.

4) Your PC takes the data packget and crunches away on it whenever it has the time (eg, is running its screen-saver).

5) When your PC gets to the end of the data packet, it goes back to the Host and says "Teacher, I've finished my homework assignment" and transmits a results file back to the Host.

6) End of DO Loop ("GO TO Step 2" :-)

7) Eventually, all of the data packet jobs at the Host get completed by someone and the total results are assembled & summarized.


-hh

[jethroted]

Well, I hate to say it, but my 1.8 ghz P4 is kicking the crap out of my 800 Mhz G4. I started with my G4 on Sunday morning, and it still hasn't finished it's first assingment (not even 50% done). My P4 was put to work yesterday morning, and I'm 3/4 the way done my SECOND job. I love mac the best still, but it's scary. Even my 1 Ghz P3 was put to work yesterday morning, and it's almost done it's first WU (92%), and my 800 Mhz AMD is also almost done it's first WU (87%) also put to work yesterday morning. My poor G4 is getting an ass-kicking, and it had a whole day head start!

*For future reference right now it's Tuesday - noon.

[springscansing]

Originally posted by jethroted
Well, I hate to say it, but my 1.8 ghz P4 is kicking the crap out of my 800 Mhz G4. I started with my G4 on Sunday morning, and it still hasn't finished it's first assingment (not even 50% done). My P4 was put to work yesterday morning, and I'm 3/4 the way done my SECOND job. I love mac the best still, but it's scary. Even my 1 Ghz P3 was put to work yesterday morning, and it's almost done it's first WU (92%), and my 800 Mhz AMD is also almost done it's first WU (87%) also put to work yesterday morning. My poor G4 is getting an ass-kicking, and it had a whole day head start!

*For future reference right now it's Tuesday - noon.

Work units are not all even close to the same size.

[howard]

work units are different sizes and also they don't make use of altivec

[medea]

F@H Team Macrumors for me.
#30 and moving up, wait maybe not....

[beez7777]

i've been running seti for a few weeks now, and just downloaded folding. i have 8 WU done in seti, and 15% done with 1 in folding.

[Hemingray]

Wow, over 50% don't participate in DC... and Folding is less than SETI?! :o

C'mon, guys... join Folding! Aliens can wait. We have real life issues here and now. That's how I see it at least... ;)

[mc68k]

folding r0x0rs. get onboard. we're not moving up in the rankings unless we get more help, and that means u! ask us n e thing about it. we'll answer all your questions.

ive been impressed by the recent influx of new members in the last few days. thanks for all the help.

JOIN US!! it's fun.

r0wer_cpu and i run like 70+ machines here 24/7 for the team.

in case ur wondering, i'm talking about folding, not SETI

[crazytom]

Originally posted by mc68k
folding r0x0rs. get onboard. we're not moving up in the rankings unless we get more help, and that means u! ask us n e thing about it. we'll answer all your questions.

ive been impressed by the recent influx of new members in the last few days. thanks for all the help.

JOIN US!! it's fun.

r0wer_cpu and i run like 70+ machines here 24/7 for the team.

in case ur wondering, i'm talking about folding, not SETI

OK. I've passed the hundred WU with SETI...on to F@H!

What's the deal with # of polygons per atom?

Where do you find a script for dual processors?

If F@H interferes with my productivity, can I shut it down temporarily and not lose any calculations already done?

[Mr. Anderson]

Ha, finally I've gotten it up and running again on my new Dual 1.25. It'll be nice to be contributing again.

D

[mc68k]

Originally posted by crazytom
What's the deal with # of polygons per atom?where do u see this?

Where do you find a script for dual processors?i made it, so it's not easy to find. :)

http://homepage.mac.com/mc68k
If F@H interferes with my productivity, can I shut it down temporarily and not lose any calculations already done? yes. proteins are composed of frames, so you will not get credit for the frame that work is currently being done on. so if you're on frame 86, then when you quit you will start frame 86 again. there are deadlines for the proteins (depending on which one they give you) which you can find here (http://folding.stanford.edu/psummary.html). i think this is the biggest concern, i run folding on a vast array of machines and notice no performance degradation on any of them.

[mc68k]

Originally posted by dukestreet
Ha, finally I've gotten it up and running again on my new Dual 1.25. It'll be nice to be contributing again.i'm glad that my script is helping people with the DP setup.

thanks for jumping back on. :)

[yzedf]

3428 units as of 25 Feb 2003!!! w00t w00t!!!

[yzedf]

for SETI on OS X using the command line version...

$ ./setiathome > /dev/null &

run setiathome send the visual output to /dev/null (lala land) and run in the background

then

$ sudo renice 19 pid

where pid is the process identification number which you get via:

$ ps ux

Nice of 19 gives setiathome the LOWEST priority on your system. so if you are doing "real work" it will not get in the way. when things slack off, it picks up the pace again. no having to remember to turn it off and on...

[Dont Hurt Me]

I think seti is a lot of crap and this is why. If there are Aliens out there and have the ability to transfers the great distance of space then they would or will contact us when it suits them if ever. Also i doubt very much they would or will be using something as primitive as radio waves just as we dont use smoke signals anymore. I think there is evidence that something else may be out there but our Govt along with others have no intent on revealing this because there is actually little they can do about it. If this is so the technology gap would be like comparing the wright brothers plane to a F35 only greater. What do we have to offer them? Not much if they are there. They would simply study us as we do ant colonies. We on the other hand have everything to gain from them! I think using our computers for cancer cures has not only a more noble cause but a real chance of finding that needle in the hay stack. I would like to find out more about this though am not thrilled with handing my cpu over to someone else.

[howard]

i agree...seti is a load of crap. I'd rather help find cures for diseases rather than randomly search for aliens.

[eric_n_dfw]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
I think seti is a lot of crap and this is why. If there are Aliens out there and have the ability to transfers the great distance of space then they would or will contact us when it suits them if ever. Also i doubt very much they would or will be using something as primitive as radio waves just as we dont use smoke signals anymore. I think there is evidence that something else may be out there but our Govt along with others have no intent on revealing this because there is actually little they can do about it. If this is so the technology gap would be like comparing the wright brothers plane to a F35 only greater. What do we have to offer them? Not much if they are there. They would simply study us as we do ant colonies. We on the other hand have everything to gain from them! I think using our computers for cancer cures has not only a more noble cause but a real chance of finding that needle in the hay stack. I would like to find out more about this though am not thrilled with handing my cpu over to someone else.
Well said - I actually tried the Folding client but it didn't play nice with VPC and then the 72 bit RC5 client came out so I'm back on that. (And I've got to long history with RC5 to quit)

[topicolo]

I still do SETI occasionally since I was one of the original Beta Testers for that program.

[finchna]

Originally posted by crazytom

My question is: how do the top end P4's compare to a Dual GHz mac? On SETI, at least, (as much as I hate to admit it), a fast P4 crunches a 'unit' in 1/2 to 1/3 the time that my Dual GHz will.

I have a dual 1.25 PM runing 10.2.4 and a dual 2.8 Xeon Dell workstation running XP Pro on my desk. The Dell processes 2 units in between 3-4 hours on average. My Mac averages about 1 every 10 hours--so there's no comparison in SETI processing time. Gotta say though that at the moment I'm surfing (and creating web site documentation with screen pics, etc.), burning CDs, listening to iTunes, while running SETI and a host of other things on my Mac. My Winbox would be choking on all that. Burning CDs on the Dell can be problematic all by themselves. So, the speed may not be comparable but productivity is far higher.

Nathan

[crazytom]

Originally posted by mc68k
(edit: # polygons per atom)

where do u see this?
[/b]i made it, so it's not easy to find. :)

http://homepage.mac.com/mc68k
[/B]

The # of polygons per atom is in the Preferences...->Settings of F@H (using the graphical interface).

Thanks for the link, too!

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by crazytom
The # of polygons per atom is in the Preferences...->Settings of F@H (using the graphical interface).

Thanks for the link, too!

I was just about to say "what the heck are you talking about?" when I thought to check and realized I was running quite an old version of F@H. Oooops! That's certainly not like me, I'm usually always on the ball with software updates.

So I downloaded v3.24, and I set the # of atoms to the minimum, but who knows if that will make any difference, as I never display the protein anyway... unless I'm checking the progress, of course. ;)

[crazytom]

Originally posted by howard
i agree...seti is a load of crap. I'd rather help find cures for diseases rather than randomly search for aliens.

I have to respectfully disagree. I believe that we should be looking inward as well as outward. While I have to agree that SETI is very limited in its scope, and, its benefits to the world are very minimal, it is trying to answer a question that is ages old: are we alone?

Personally, I'd like to know the answer to that question. The SETI project has limited data that needs to be crunched and it (supposedly) will all be crunched during the course of this year.

So, that being said, I've changed my mind and will be crunching both F@H and S@H on my Dual (though S@H seems to rob 20% processor time from F@H regardless of what their priorities are set to). I'll run F@H on my other machine (which doesn't play well with S@H -> it messes up games in the classic environment).

[howard]

Originally posted by crazytom
I have to respectfully disagree. I believe that we should be looking inward as well as outward. While I have to agree that SETI is very limited in its scope, and, its benefits to the world are very minimal, it is trying to answer a question that is ages old: are we alone?

\

yeah i do know what you mean but it just seems like a fruitless search. i don't completely deny the possibilty of aliens but i don't believe that we'll encounter any in my lifetime.

[Odox]

Well i'm now folding on both my 2 machines for the team, not the best machines in the world but they should bring in some points eh?
I used to do the Seti thing, but that was a long time ago - I think this is for a better cause anyway.

[Dont Hurt Me]

Do you really think if there is aliens running around outthere that they are using something as primitive as radio? I dont think so. There is a slim chance that we might catch another civilization that was as primitive as us but then that signal would have been traveling space for thousands of years more then likely so by the time they got our answer or reply they would have advance by hundreds or thousands of years. Now you still think they would be using radio after all those years?Do you think we will be using radio in a thousand years?

[MrMacMan]

I fold... but I can't believe that 50% doesn't DC... what the hell... people people... we need your idle computers, heck even if they AREn't idle.

The Tops SETI teams are all cheating resending old packets to the main system and geting tons of units... ech so stupid.

Fold, really it is the NEEDED thing to do.

[crazytom]

Originally posted by Dont Hurt Me
Do you really think if there is aliens running around outthere that they are using something as primitive as radio? I dont think so. There is a slim chance that we might catch another civilization that was as primitive as us but then that signal would have been traveling space for thousands of years more then likely so by the time they got our answer or reply they would have advance by hundreds or thousands of years. Now you still think they would be using radio after all those years?Do you think we will be using radio in a thousand years?

We still use 'radio' why wouldn't someone else? Will we use 'radio' in a thousand years...more than likely (if the human race is still around and hasn't blown itself up or created some super virus/germ/protein that'll wipe itself out). And say, just by the slightest chance, we do discover some signal and are able to decode it and/or study it. The information we could learn about another culture would be astonishing! Sure it might not exist anymore and we'll probably never meet them (which would probably be a good thing! --- I'd hate to meet a culture like the one we have on earth!!!), but if there's a chance....why not?

As for folding, I believe the presented premise is good, but, tell you what: read "Prey" by Michael Crichton and tell me if you still think protein folding is ALL good. Our computers are doing work that is as capable of designing the next incurable super disease as it is curing our current 'incurable' diseases.

I may be a Westerner, but I very much believe in the doctrine of Yin and Yang.

(btw: I'm still doing S@H & F@H).

[eric_n_dfw]

http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.html

Here's numbers from my Blue & White G4 400 (OS X 10.2.4 with a bunch of crap running so take it for what it's worth)

On the old (not AltiVec) client, the best bench mark was 786,038 keys/sec on RC5-72

Now I'm getting 3,362,149 keys/sec :eek:

Rock me!


According to distributed.net's site, that's about equivilent to the key/sec output of an AMD Athlon XP (Palomino) at 1533Mhz or an Intel Pentium 4 at 2530Mhz. Not bad for 400Mhz, eh?

THIS is why my sig line is what it is! :cool:

[Stelliform]

Because of the poll, I have started again. I used to do SETI, but lost interest. Now I am folding for MR!

[topicolo]

I've got a P4 1.6Ghz that's pumping out about a workunit a day. Is that slow? The score just increased by 30 points in two days.

[MrMacMan]

Originally posted by topicolo
I've got a P4 1.6Ghz that's pumping out about a workunit a day. Is that slow? The score just increased by 30 points in two days.
Amazingly that is good...

I am really scared that that easily beats my iMac 800... um...uh.

[topicolo]

Well, I just added a Duron 700Mhz and it's not doing so well. At this rate, this computer will only be able to crunch a 400frame workunit every 2 days.

[MrMacMan]

Originally posted by topicolo
Well, I just added a Duron 700Mhz and it's not doing so well. At this rate, this computer will only be able to crunch a 400frame workunit every 2 days.
And intrestingly enough my iMac 800 is on the same pase.

I really thing something is wrong.

[crazytom]

How do you find out how big of a unit your machine is folding?

[mc68k]

Originally posted by crazytom
How do you find out how big of a unit your machine is folding? first go here:

~/Library/Folding@home/work

…and look for logfile0#.txt where # is a number from 1 to 9. this is assuming you did the default setup. it will also tell you what frame you are currently on.

then go to here:

http://folding.stanford.edu/psummary.html

and look up the protein number for deadline, score, and other information.

…and thanks for contributing. :)

[Kwyjibo]

Hey, I just started folding, I'm happy to be on the team and hopefully if I get a pmac 1.42 I will make it fold too.

[topicolo]

Originally posted by MrMacman
And intrestingly enough my iMac 800 is on the same pase.

I really thing something is wrong.

Wow. Could this actually be true? How can a Duron 700, albeit one with 512mb of DDR ram, match a G4 800? I feel satisfied (although you probably don't) :D