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ChristianVirtual

macrumors 601
Original poster
May 10, 2010
4,122
282
日本
Time is running faster ... The first billion points took the team several years of hard work. Now, 10 month later we are just 200m points away from the 2nd billion. A great achievement for a little team like ours.
With 2m PPD we should make it in 3 to 4 month. Let's aim before Christmas ... Winter is coming soon, time to fire up all CPUs and GPUs we have.

Keep folding ... :)
 

Louis Wu

macrumors 6502
Sep 1, 2011
429
0
Toronto
Time is running faster ... The first billion points took the team several years of hard work. Now, 10 month later we are just 200m points away from the 2nd billion. A great achievement for a little team like ours.
With 2m PPD we should make it in 3 to 4 month. Let's aim before Christmas ... Winter is coming soon, time to fire up all CPUs and GPUs we have.

Keep folding ... :)

Right On!!

:)
 

HE15MAN

macrumors 6502a
Sep 3, 2009
955
14
Florida's Treasure Coast
Time is running faster ... The first billion points took the team several years of hard work. Now, 10 month later we are just 200m points away from the 2nd billion. A great achievement for a little team like ours.
With 2m PPD we should make it in 3 to 4 month. Let's aim before Christmas ... Winter is coming soon, time to fire up all CPUs and GPUs we have.

Keep folding ... :)

Where is some info on this
 

ChristianVirtual

macrumors 601
Original poster
May 10, 2010
4,122
282
日本
Where is some info on this

The main source is direct here in the forum ;)


Folding@Home is a long running project from Stanford University utilising Distributed Computing methods to analyse mathematically why and how proteins "fold" in a certain way in 3-dimensional space. The home page of the project at Stanford you can find here: http://folding.stanford.edu

Problem with those little protein is: when then fold in a different shape they don't work properly or even worst: mis-folded they can cause all kind of diseases like cancer, Alzheimer, ALS, ...

The basic idea is that one can run a little piece of software on the computer which get a working unit assigned; doing the required simulation. Technically the required software can use the CPU in your Apple; or also your GPU when running Windows or Linux.
Once this working unit is done and send back to Stanford you would get a certain amount of credits points assigned. You can't do anything with those point; they are just to recognise your individual contribution.

There are right now 170'000 volunteers participating and donating unused computer power to the project (some have severe dedicated system doing nothing else then folding; not really unused).

The donors often are organised in teams; like our team from MacRumors (#3446). Beside the interest in the science and the wish to support basic medical research there is also the aspect of "optimising" (same as "playing" ;) ) with the computer and having some competitions between teams; but also sometimes inside a team. But important: always in a friendly way always having the scientific target in mind.

The current team stats (http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teamstats) lists our team at rank #48; not too bad.

As mentioned last year the team achieved 1billion cumulated points over a loong period of time (I think around 12 years). With the increase of computational power (mainly by GPU) the same amount of scientific work can be done now in 12 month. Which is amazing.

So this time we push ourself to get the 2nd billion done very soon; heading for 3billion afterwards.

So; now I stop writing and give you the chance to ask further questions ... :D happy to answer them all ...
 
Last edited:

Louis Wu

macrumors 6502
Sep 1, 2011
429
0
Toronto
well i had more internet downtown. such fun :(

1,840,432,285

I hear you. at least it wasn't anything that you had to fix yourself... or pay to have fixed, I hope!

one of my GPU cards had a failed fan recently so I've got to RMA that one.

and the hard drive on my GPU folder packed it in last week so there was downtime on that as well... back now, and with the latest drivers and client :)
 

ChristianVirtual

macrumors 601
Original poster
May 10, 2010
4,122
282
日本
How can I join the MR team?

Thank you for your interest.

The easiest way is: follow this guide at https://folding.stanford.edu/home/the-software/

Important:
1) choose a donor name you want to use for folding
2) get a passkey (link referenced in the guide above); that is required to receive more points; don't share the key with anybody; for yourself only.
3) Download the software and start with default setup
4) select team 3446 when the setup of the client software ask for it.

The team number 3446 is the team ID for MacRumors.

Once you have done you can share your donor name with us so we can easier look after you in the public stats pages.

If you face any issue with the software installation let us know, normally it run very smooth.

What hardware and OS you plan to use ? Keep in mind that folding with GPU on Mac OS is not possible and CPU-based work units can take 12 to 24 hours to finish. Windows and Linux support CPU and GPU folding.
 

twoodcc

macrumors P6
Feb 3, 2005
15,307
26
Right side of wrong
I hear you. at least it wasn't anything that you had to fix yourself... or pay to have fixed, I hope!

one of my GPU cards had a failed fan recently so I've got to RMA that one.

and the hard drive on my GPU folder packed it in last week so there was downtime on that as well... back now, and with the latest drivers and client :)

yeah it's always something. i came home to my computer restarted 21 hours ago :(

how are the new drivers?

1,864,449,518
 

iShater

macrumors 604
Aug 13, 2002
7,026
470
Chicagoland
I just passed you a couple of weeks ago, don't come back, I'll lose a spot again...:rolleyes:

That's it. I shall fire up my 12" Powerbook and get crunching. :p

(For a while I did have all my computers at home - and sometimes at work - crunching, then I got my electric bill :eek: )
 

ChristianVirtual

macrumors 601
Original poster
May 10, 2010
4,122
282
日本
That's it. I shall fire up my 12" Powerbook and get crunching. :p

(For a while I did have all my computers at home - and sometimes at work - crunching, then I got my electric bill :eek: )

You really should; those direct challenge can't be unanswered :rolleyes:
(Nooooo, we are are pushing here, not at all ;) )

But you might want to concider running NaCL WU on Chrome on older hardware. Those run shorter and give you better control on the overall runtime and powerconsumption: a real concern for all of us. :(
 
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