FR Folding@Home Project Update -- We're Now 62 of all teams

Stanford University ^ | 10/18/2006 | Texas Booster

[texas booster]

Time for a new Free Republic folding@home thread.

Our Free Republic team of 391 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE).

Currently, the team is in 63th place (with 1,039 active CPUs - 74,650 completed Work Units and 13.75 million points).

This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please see the links posted below (or read one of the previous 20+ folding threads)

[texas booster]

Time for a new thread, getting ready for the election season and the Holidays, and one more very important event:

TO CLOSE THE LATEST FREEPATHON WITH A BANG!

As of Wednesday evening, FR is less than $3,000 from going over our goal of $70,000.

Nearly 400 FReepers donate unused cycles to the Folding@Home project, dedicated to curing multiple diseases.

How many of us can donate a little cash to keep FR going strong? I am in with my donation tonight.

Please press here:

Click Here For The FReepaThon THread

Click Here To DONATE

Thank You Once again for taking the time to read this Thread

And Always Remember
FR NEEDS YOU!

[texas booster]

It's been quiet here lately, with everyone needing to attend to little things like making a living and school.

Here are a few benchmarks that we will soon meet:

14,000,000 points
75,000 work units
Chris_Primavera passing me to enjoy #5 top folder
Malsua popping 1,000,000 points
Klutz waltzing past 4,000,000 points
and lots of other accomplishments that we will highlight this week.

It would be great if we have any folders who have never donated to a FReepathon popping a small amount into the hopper. Always helps for good community relations!

[Professional Engineer]

Hey, not bad for only one machine crunching

103 Professional_Engineer 23585 128

[IslandJeff]

#223 bump - All I get are 50,000-unit WU's. They must like me or something.

One PC on all the time, no more heating problems.

[texas booster]

Thanks for your help pushing the team up the charts.

Didn't I see that you also contribute systems to a BOINC project or two?

[perfect stranger]

Off the ping list please.

[texas booster]

You aren't kidding - 385 point every six days. That's some big crunching going on.

I had a protein months back that I thought would never finish, but contributed 500 or 600 points. Eventually Stanford ran out of those proteins.

[texas booster]

You are off the ping list.

Please keep Folding or BOINC in mind if you ever need a reason to run your systems 24/7 ...

[Professional Engineer]

My slow system is hunting ET...

http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/team_display.php?teamid=30594

[mad_as_he$$]

Yikes thought that program had been killed!!!!! ET we got you!

[Incorrigible]

Did we slow down on the way to #1?

Or are the top 70 just that much further ahead of us?

[perfect stranger]

Thanks for stating the reason in clear terms.

I have a few different machines but I tend to switch the HD's around. I guess that this is not for me.

[NurdlyPeon]

Switched from BOINC to Folding to help out our team.

[texas booster]

We are now in a stretch where we have million point jumps between teams.

The first 45,000 teams were easier to pass up, but now we at the front of the marathon where teams have had a two year head start.

[texas booster]

I saw your first points show up this week.

Thanks for pumping up the team!

[IslandJeff]

My Type I Diabetes ping list (infrequent postings):



Type I Diabetes Ping List
FR mail me to add yourself! (Type IIs welcome, too.)

Diabetes Research Avenue Ping.

[texas booster]

Nah, SETI will be with us for a long, long time. Especially now that they have gone BOINCers.

If only to humor old timers that started on SETI, what, 10 years ago?!

[texas booster]

Many of the folding projects are also directed at diabetes. Here is a protein that many of us have (loved) to fold:

********************************

"P2142"

For this project we return to an old project in a more sophisticated way. The simulated system is human aldose reductase, thought to be the cause of many long-term health consequences of diabetes, such as cataracts, renal failure, and peripheral nerve degeneration, which is studied by the Boxer Group here at Stanford. The experiments probe the molecular vibrations of two druglike inhibitors of the protein as a function of mutations in the protein, resulting in data concerning the electric fields of the inhibitor binding site. This has immense potential to teach us about how drugs, inhibitors, and substrates bind to proteins, and hence has potential impact in both medicine (how to treat disease), molecular biology (how biology works, on a molecular level), and traditional biochemistry (how biology works, on a chemical level).

Because of the very large size of the system (aldose reductase is 316 residues, plus a cofactor, plus the inhibitor, plus some 80,000 water atoms) these simulations take up a lot of memory, and so will be restricted to a subset of Folding@home clients, those which allow use of 200 Mb or more (note that this setting was changed from 100 Mb as of 9/22/06).

Points and deadlines:

p2142 - points 476, deadline 65 days"

[Malsua]

Eh, I got 80k points to go. Gonna be at least a 20 days.

This thread however will motivate me tomorrow to punch up a couple more machines that I've neglected :)

[Professional Engineer]

Just about. It started in 1997 I believe. I logged in in 2001. Ended the Classic program with over 107,000 hours of cpu time.

[texas booster]

Toss me on the diabetes list.

Struggling to keep my insulin effective without medication. Doctor says its something about being old, overweight, bad diet and sedentary.

Other than that ...

[hatfieldmccoy]

Hmmm. I'm somewhat familier with the concept but I have security concerns-- am I opening up a port that can be hacked??

[MrBlueSky2005]

I'll be adding two more 3.0 Ghz CPUs this weekend to the 3 I've already got folding... :-D

[texas booster]

No. F@H does not open a port, but pings only the Stanford server IP addresses through a normal internet connection. It resides on your system and just folds away when nothing else is happening.

Stanford has designed the project so that YOU are very secure, and they spend a lot of CPU time verifying results that may be spoofed. 2048-bit signatures make a difference.

It became a joke that the DUmmies thought that we could just send any old result to Stanford and FR would get credit.

From the Stanford University FAQs:

What about security issues? We have worked very hard to maintain the best security possible with modern computer science methodology. Our software will upload and download data only from our data server here at Stanford. The Cores are also digitally signed (see below) to make sure that you're getting the true Stanford cores and nothing else.

How is this possible? We take extensive measures to check all of the data entering your computer and the results we send back to Stanford with 2048 bit digital signatures. If the signatures don't match (on either the input or the output) the client will throw away the data and start again. This ensures, using the best software security measures developed to date (digital signatures and PKI in version 3.0), that we are keeping the tightest possible security. Finally, the client/screen saver are available for download only from this web site, so that we can guarantee the integrity of the software. We do not support Folding@home software obtained elsewhere and prohibit others to distribute the software.

[IslandJeff]

You're on.

DM can be a killer, but it's much more likely to just be a chronic pain in the ass.

As some of us say, Keep Control.

Thanks for the Folding Ping. DM-I could be one of the first to fall under the results of the project.

[texas booster]

Remember - the name is Texas_Booster on all new CPUs ...

Are they dual core or HT CPUs? I have one HT system that just sits and runs two instances of F@H. I may get a true dual core for Christmas.

[brityank]

I started Seti Classic on my PacBell/386 Win95, then moved it onto my current Dell PII WinME. Then they went BOINCers, and ME couldn't BOINC. So I was glad to join up with FR's F@H team. Fold on.



Become a FR Monthly Donor -- it's painless!

[DocRock]

bttt

[texas booster]

A 386?? A PacBell 386?? Its a wonder that SETI ever got a completed unit!

I am actually upgrading a 486 this weekend for a widow who just wants to send email.

Of course the only thing that I am actually using from her old box is the floppy.

PacBell allowed me a good living for many years, fixing systems even though they were still under warranty. Many an owner paid me just to make it work, after hours on the phone with PB.

[Route66]

"Please join the team" bump

[texas booster]

I'm off to bed. Can't stand another 3:00 am ending.

Keep up the pings!

[zeugma]

Yikes thought that program had been killed!!!!! ET we got you!

Eventually, they'll put both projects together and start folding ETs. 

[Drango]

Bump for a good time!

[E.G.C.]

BTTT

[houeto]

I am actually upgrading a 486 this weekend for a widow who just wants to send email.

Of course the only thing that I am actually using from her old box is the floppy.

You didn't REALLY just say this, did you? LMAO!!!

[texas booster]

I am only using the floppy because she really, really likes them.

I have enough antiques in the computer room to outfit a small school. Most of the good stuff is on a bench folding.

I suspect that many a geek has a room of parts that are just barely useable, but *may* be useful one day.

I've seen pictures!

[MrBlueSky2005]

Remember - the name is Texas_Booster on all new CPUs ...

Are they dual core or HT CPUs? I have one HT system that just sits and runs two instances of F@H. I may get a true dual core for Christmas.

Ha. It'll be my second dual core PC (well, really a family computer) and then I also have an older computer on board for folding.

[texas booster]

For my last family computer I picked up an HP pavilion for $299 - no rebates, legal Windows and software, with warranty.

Adding 1 Gb of RAM, a fast NVidia card and wireless enet, I still have decent deal, and now the computer is usuable for the family.

[dfwddr]

Has anyone tried using their GPU yet ?

[Professional Engineer]

Eventually, they'll put both projects together and start folding ETs.

Just don't spindle or mutilate him. ET is very loveable ya' know.

[mad_as_he$$]

Actually I prefer the more humanoid type aliens over the bulbous ones!

[texas booster]

Looks like someone at Extreme Overclockers has an X1900XT working after a config issue.

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?s=d1356ab296398398048c0d2b68559adf&t=237623

Currently the only GPU work unit is p_2711GPU, p_2712GPU and p_2713GPU. Here are Stanford's remarks on the unit:

Project 2711

p2711 : lambda repressor, a fast-folding mutant. This is an exciting project because if everything is right we should see a LARGE proportion of these suckers fold because of the huge increase in simulation time the GPUs afford us. This means we have to make less approximations in describing the process and rate of folding. The physical system is a bit naive, however: the implicit solvent model is extremely basic.

p2721: same as 2711, except the solvent model is a bit more sophisticated.

p2722 and p2723: same as previous two, just simulating at higher temperature, so that we see more exploration of conformations. (More data!)

points 220 deadline 4 days

[texas booster]

< Sigh.>

I was hoping to reach 300,000 points first before giving up the #5 spot. I had to give up most of my 24/7 systems when I changed jobs last month.

Meet me in Dallas for a long tall iced tea sometime. You've earned it!

[JCEccles]

I have two dedicated boxes sitting in my hobby shed running dual core CPUs 24/7 on the F@H projects. For the most part I cobbled them together from scrap and salvage I found lying around.

[NY.SS-Bar9]

How 'bout you meet me in NY for a Long Island Iced Tea?

[Drango]

Tonight, to make the top 20 list http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120
you had to have over 500 points average. Wow. And kudos to the power folders!

Still the majority of points come from ordinary FReepers producing 50-300 points average. Fold on!

[Malsua]

Still the majority of points come from ordinary FReepers producing 50-300 points average. Fold on!

Absolutely correct!

The top 5 folders have produced 45.6% of the points total. The majority has produced more.

We're producing 50,000+ points per day. MASSIVE numbers. I added 6 more machines yesterday. Eventually I'll be "all in" but it's a work in progress!

[Malsua]

Looks like someone at Extreme Overclockers has an X1900XT

Ok, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what that meant. I'm like...what the hell, someone is folding on a graphics card? Yeah...someone is folding on a graphics card ;).

Since my gaming rig has a 7800GTX video card in it(for the uninitiated, that's not the hottest card any more, but it's damn close) I'm going to have to figure out how to run a GPU client in my gaming rig.

I'm running a 4800+ dual core and a 7800GTX video card...that's 3 processors and currently only folding with one. Seems like I should be able to figure out how to crank my numbers :)

[Drango]

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120

Still in beta and limited to X1900XT series.

http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-ATI.html

[HKMk23]

Thanks for the new thread.

I was just nosing around the team stats and it's noteworthy to me that we've a comparatively high percentage of Active Users, we're just a shade below 38%, but, for all of the teams with more points than us, the percentage is lower.

Currently at 395 Members, we're the 81st largest team, but we're the 34th Most Active, with 149 Active Users. Team Ukraine is at 79th with 420 Members and 163 Active Users. But from there you've got to slide all the way up to 54th place to find a team with more Active Users that we've got -- KCIX.com with a Membership of 616 and 179 Active Users -- but, at 29%, they still don't beat our percentage of Members who are Active Users. It's not until you get above the 28th largest, Team Lithuania, that most teams listed have more Active Users than we do; and all of those teams are more than three times our size.

Now, if we can just multiply our Membership while maintaining this level of efficiency...