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Posted on 12/29/2005 8:34:56 PM PST by systematic
OK, new thread to celebrate reaching a major milestone! Within a few hours Team FreeRepublic will be in the Top1000!!!!
We should pass Dean for America, around noon tommorrow. Other liberal teams want to challenge us (DUmmies and Kos) but we're humiliating them beyond description.
What is Folding@Home? A Stanford University project to find out how proteins fold.
Why it's important: Proteins folding wrong causes all kinds of diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and forms of cancer. Folding@Home uses novel computational methods and large scale distributed computing, to simulate timescales thousands to millions of times longer than previously achieved. Through Folding@home, scientists now have the horsepower to study the mechanics of protein folding. With its ability to share the workload among hundred of thousands of computers economically, Folding@home can help scientists understand how proteins snap, or don’t, into their predestined shapes — and may help to explain the origins of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and apparently unrelated diseases. We're fueling research that could end all that.
How it works: You download a safe, tested program that is certified by Stanford University. It gets work from Stanford, runs calculations using your spare computer power, and sends the results back to the University.
Is it safe? Yes! Folding@Home rarely effects computer performance in any way and won't compromise your privacy in any way. It only uses the computing power you aren't using so it doesn't slow down other programs.
How to starting folding for Team FreeRepublic: 1.)Download the folding program from Stanford University's folding download page. Type in your desired username. 2) Type in 36120 for the team number. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - if you get the number wrong, you won't be folding for team FreeRepublic! 3) The third question asks, "Launch automatically at machine startup, installing this as a service?" - We recommend you answer YES. Otherwise you will have to manually start the program after every reboot.
How can my computer help?Even if he were given exclusive access to all of the world’s supercomputers, Standford still wouldn’t have as much processing power as they get from the supercluster of people’s desktop systems Folding@home relies on. Modern supercomputers are essentially a cluster of hundreds of processors linked by fast networking. But Stanford needed the power of hundreds of thousands of processors, not just hundreds.
There's no reason to not get involved! It's free, easy, and you can know you're helping every minute without lifting a finger.
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Summary - Folding Links of Interest (as compiled by Klutz Dohanger on the previous thread)
1. Where to get the Folding@home client
http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html
2. FreeRepublic.com Folder Stats
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=36120
3. Extreme Overclockers stats for FreeRepublic.com
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=36120
NOTE:
Only the top 2000 teams are included on Overclockers, and when a team reaches the top 800, individual stats are included.
4. Our Competition:
a. Democratic Underground
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157
b. Daily Kos
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=48157
5. Another Statistics Page
a. Sortable Team Member Stats
http://fahstats.com/t.php?t=36120
b. Team Production
http://fahstats.com/tp.php?t=36120
c. Teams on the Radar Scope
http://fahstats.com/tr.php?t=36120
6. Third Party monitoring software
http://fahmon.silent-blade.org/
7. DU Folding Thread.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5672092
8. How much are those work units worth?
a. http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/allprojects
b. http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html
8. Stat Image Generator
a.Link http://www.statgfx.com/statgfx/getlink.cgi?service=folding
Laundry bump!
Absolutely, as long as most of the team members agree on the new image
Will this program slow down my computer?
Previous threads (for those who wish to catch up):
(Vanity) FreeRepublic Folding@Home Project Update (#1700)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1537549/posts
(Vanity) FreeRepublic Folding@Home Project Update (We're in the Top 1,550)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1541538/posts
(Vanity) FreeRepublic Folding@Home Project Update (We're in the Top 1,450)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1542884/posts
(Vanity) FreeRepublic Folding@Home Project Update (We're in the Top 1,200!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1547014/posts
I was about ready to hit ctrl-paste, when I noticed that you'd already moved the links over.
Looking at the stats page, it looks like we'll hit the 1000 mark around midnight. We've got about 6 deadwood teams in front of us, which will give us enough of a bump...
NO. The software runs in the background, using unused CPU cycles and not interfering with or slowing down any of your regular programs.
I tried to download the program--but all I ended up with was a desk top animation of Bill Clinton with his pants down chasing a half-dressed, young intern around the Oval Office desk!
You SURE this program is safe?? It's not like the " the telephone company wants you to put a plastic bag over the receiver end of your phone to blow all the dust out of their lines " is it?
DAB
My sevrer is ALREADY FULL with all the Great Information/articles/ Fantastic Art/humor and the " Hillary Clinton Files " already! Let me know how it turns out folks.
To answer your question from the other thread: your points are pretty much normal, I believe. I'm averaging about 75 a day myself per CPU. If you're not doing anything else with your older computers, by all means throw them--our team's success isn't dominated by one person, but by many people pitching in their CPUs to make it work. :-)
Does it run under AIX? I have a quad pSeries box here not doing much.
Will it slow down your computer? No.
I say this as an expert on computers.
You will NOT notice anything different by joining the folding team on FR.
The only thing I caution against is that your CPU will be running max cycles. That means it will run a little bit hotter. It's not a biggie.
The short answer is "no".
The long answer: Assuming you're running Windows XP--hit ctrl-alt-del to access the Task Manager. Click on the "Processes" tab. Under the "Image Name" column, you should see a "System Idle Process"... for the vast majority of users, these will be in the high 90's. That's because CPUs haven't been the bottleneck in computational speed for the average user for a loooong time...
We moved up 243 spots this week - 55 spots today (we're currently #1,036)
see: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_list.php?s=&p=11
The new sign-ups are kicking in! :o)
Be a while before I add to the bottom line here - I have three boxes going, two of which are crunching 181 point units, and the third is crunching a 600 point unit. But it should be a nice bump in a few days ;)
In fact, as long as your computer is adequately cooled, ie, it came with a decent fan and heat sink, FAH will actually increase your system's longevity. Most computers fail, on shutdown, and startup, and the cooling and heating of the components, is the #1 cause of failure. Now you can either leave it off all the time, or leave it on all the time... me, I enjoy my computers more when they're turned on... :)
That's awesome! Welcome to the FR team! Every single CPU helps!
It says 98. What does that mean?
Yes, you are correct. That said, the difference between idle and max cpu isn't that great. 50 watts or so isn't negligable. I suppose that most folks might see a rise in their home bill of 25 cents a month or more. If it's that critical to them, it's important they don't add folding.
Oh man.. now we're talking greek or something :). Doesn't vmware allow you emulate linux and windows programs, or am I completely out of my league here?
"System Idle Process" is just what it sounds like, idling; it means that 98% of your CPU cycles are being wasted.
I had a friend relate this analogy to me once: Let's say you have your photos developed at a 1-hour photo lab, 4 hours away. You drive there, have your pictures developed, and drive home. A total of 9 hours spent in order to get your photographs.
Let's say the photo lab became twice as fast... developing pictures in half the time, 30 minutes.
However, with the drive, it still takes you 8.5 hours to develop the photographs.
That's what I mean when I say that CPUs have not been the bottleneck for the average user for a long time. F@H works to make use of those idle CPU cycles, and will not cause your system to slow down at all.
Thanks for the info. I'll work on getting my older systems up and running again. They're just gathering dust right now, lol. It will take a week or 3 because of work constraints and reconfiguring the systems, (debug, format, reinstall Windows, firewall, & AV). They're slow, but won't have anything else running, so they might help out a little bit.
RT
What says 98, and repeat the question please... we must have missed something in shifting the threads over..
Dude! You rock! What do you run on it? They do have Linux installations.
I finally got off my duff and looked, and oddly, I think I might be able to get the Mac executable to work under AIX. I'll try it sometime soon when I have some free time. In the meantime, I d/l it and have it running under my 2 banger Windoze box.
Er, sorry, disregard my question. For some reason I confused AIX with Alpha dec boxes. *hides*
ahh... never mind, slap me... you're running windows 98, and
no, the program won't slow down your computer, unless you use
it for some heavy game programs.
If you do, then you just quit the client, and start it back up when you're through. But for standard web browsing, office, and other programs, you'll never even know it's there.
Currently, I'm using that box to create/modify a new app for work, kind of a side project. It's running AIX 5.3
Man, I haven't heard of Alpha DEC's in an age, are they even manufactured anymore?
OK - I'm running .... or rather folding
If that is your "system idle process" number, then your computer is using only 2% of the CPU power under ordinary circumstances.
The FAH client is pretty good about letting other processes get the CPU time they need. I run FAH on a machine I use for gaming and I have never noticed any problems. The games run as fast as every.
I don't know, but... only a couple of years ago I saw the inside a geek frat... and I mean GEEK... not a typo. Well, it wasn't an official fraternity, there were women there, just an entire dorm/club of geeks living together. Everyone in there was a computer major of some sort. And, it was the most amazing thing you'd ever seen. The typical member had about 4 boxes squirrelled in their tiny dorms, one had as many as 8 all together, server-type. Saw plenty of Alpha Decs... huge! They had a couple of server rooms with so many servers that it looked like something out of NASA. I'll never forget it.
If you want to run it on a laptop, you should scale back the % of CPU its allowed to consume, to keep your laptop from overheating. I was running it full out to stress test my new laptop and it fried. It was under warranty and I got a new motherboard, but I haven't fired up the program since. If I do I would scale it back.
Right click on the Red O that's down in your system tray, and select configure. Team number should be right about the center of the dialogue box that pops up. Just type in 36120, and hit ok, and when your job completes, it'll credit to you, and the FR team.
I once calculated it (for Seti@home) at about $7-$8/month for for 24/7 crunching on three machines versus 24/7 idling. Of course, I drive my boxes pretty hard anyway - I do a lot of video encoding and such - so my machines are hardly idling 24/7 anyway, meaning the difference was pretty negligible in the end. I suspect that spare cycles tend to be scarcer for me than a lot of folks, but YMMV :)
Do you see a little red gear/flower in your icon tray, next to the clock? Right click on it, and select "Configure". Then click on the "User" tab in the window that pops up. You should see an entry for the team member. Type in 36120, hit OK, and you're good to go.
Once you've changed it, you should be able to confirm your team membership by right clicking on the icon again, going to Status->Team Statistics.
I am at 0 of 500 frames complete. The first frame is due to be complete in about 15 minutes, the Work Unit End is estimated at 10 days, 9 hours.
What does all that mean?
Hrmmm. Something is awry if you have to do that. What platform are you running?
That should be 2 boxes - the third was added recently...
I dropped in long enough to change the logo. When I first put a logo in, literally nothing would load for me except the crybaby. So, crybaby became our mascot for a while. It wasn't very professional but at least it wasn't boring.
Thanks one and all for the help in answering technical questions since I seldom can look at FR during the day. Please keep FReepmailing me and I'll answer while having dinner at midnight in front of Free Republic.
Off to bed!
The 500 frame jobs are pretty standard, it means that your 'puter is going to have to crunch through about 500,000 computations, at 10,000 computations per frame. The numbers are a little misleading, for the first frame or two. That sort of job, should be around 1-4 minutes per frame, and you should see the numbers stabilize after the 2nd or 3rd frame. I know, I freaked out, when my first job told me that I'd finish sometime in 2011...
If I understand correctly, and someone will no doubt jump in if not, workunits are broken up into "frames", which are basically like checkpoints - at the end of every frame it stops and saves its progress, and then continues on until it finishes all the frames and hence the whole unit. Once it runs through a couple of frames, it'll have a better idea of how long the whole unit will take - it's sort of guesstimating right now, so don't take that ten days as gospel just yet.
Crybaby served it's purpose... (ie, a ripple over at DU..), however, something seems to be broke with whatever you uploaded to replace it. It's a broken image link symbol, that takes you to freerepublic.com, but whatever image is supposed to be there, isn't.
Or is it just firefox?
I got it! Unfolding my first protein as we speak.
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