SCE Joins Stanford's Folding@home Program (B3D ID=32377)

[Rainbow Man]

Thank god the servers are still responsive ...

The cynic/fannish person would say that is possible since the launch bombed in europe and because the americans and japanese downloaded the client yesterday.

Of course I wouldn't say anything like that. Don't want to derail the thread.
Peace!

 

[mckmas8808]

New numbers

 

[crazygambit]

New numbers

Shouldn't Sony be making a statement milking this right about now? What the hell are they waiting for? This is great news for the PS platform and PR gold. Get on it Sony.

 

[V-G]

The cynic/fannish person would say that is possible since the launch bombed in europe and because the americans and japanese downloaded the client yesterday.

Of course I wouldn't say anything like that. Don't want to derail the thread.
Peace!

This is exactly the reason why I joined B3D, people here like you are too smart to derail threads with uninformed fanboy babling but instead stick to the facts at hand. :smile: Appreciated

 

[Geo]

Well, the site team doubled its daily production today vs the recent past, so woot woot, etc.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shouldn't Sony be making a statement milking this right about now? What the hell are they waiting for? This is great news for the PS platform and PR gold. Get on it Sony.

Might be waiting for the magic Petaflop. No-one's been able to claim a Petaflop before, so it's a landmark statement. Whereas 300 TFlops is just a load of TFlops, like just a load of TFlops elsewhere (aren't TFlops some type of Cretacious dinosaur?). Petaflops is more likely to get into newspapers I think.

 

[dskneo]

New numbers

yes! my first folding unit just finished in time for your picture! im in those statistics!

 

[Tap In]

wow, that kicks ass

 

[crazygambit]

Fixed.

 

[xatnys]

Is the PS3 (i.e. all of its hw components) going full power when F@H is running? I know the cell is likely being fully utilized, but I figure the rest of the components (i.e. rsx) aren't so much.

 

[V-G]

Is the PS3 (i.e. all of its hw components) going full power when F@H is running? I know the cell is likely being fully utilized, but I figure the rest of the components (i.e. rsx) aren't so much.

From what I have read neither the RSX nor the OS dedicated SPE are being used for folding.

 

[patsu]

From what I have read neither the RSX nor the OS dedicated SPE are being used for folding.

Do you still remember the link ? I know xbd/Carl mentioned it in this thread but it would be great if we can find more references.

Meanwhile... we achieved 403 TFLOP with 16464 PS3s.

EDIT: Hmm.... 435 TFLOP and 17770 PS3s now

 

[pjbliverpool]

Why so few GPU's? Are all X1xx series supported or just X18xx and above?

Also, are there plans to allow the G80 to be used for this? And how about R600? If so, shouldn't we expect a massive jump in GPU contribution within a year or so when R600/G80 filter down to the mainstream?

 

[Rainbow Man]

Why so few GPU's?

Probably because

A: the GPU client is a lot more obscure and unknown than the regular one. UIsn't it still beta btw? Ansd it has 'issues' with certain drivers etc and with vista also etc. It doesn't seem very solid/robust really.

B: of thse relatively few people that fold only a tiny small subset own one of the very dfew graphics cards compatible with GPU folding.

I would very much luike to know the color coding used for the molecular models however.. They don't appear to be standard.

What I can remember from my highschool chemistry days oxygen was red sulphur was yellow (and there are red and yellow balls respectively but I don't know if they represent these particular substances) coal was black and hydrogen white (yet cola seems to be gray in the PS3 client and hydrogen a sort of turqouise blue).

Then there's a dirty salmon pink sort of color that I have no idea what it might represent and dark blue balls as well (nio pun intended hehe).

Anyone got a clue? I sure don't!
There ought to be a built-in onscreen legend just forfun..
Peace.

 

[speng]

I joined the B3D team. I'm hoping we can move up in the top 100 within the next couple weeks.

Speng.

 

[xatnys]

Sony really needs to do some viral marketing already; those 16464 ps3s are just a fraction of owners.

 

[Crossbar]

IIRC Kutaragi said they were using 2 SPEs. they were using more for SACD decoding. There ought to be quite a bit of CPU left over while playing movies.

Yeah, SACD seems more expensive. link

SACD is stored in the DST format (= compressed DSD). DST changes compression methods and parameters every 1/75 seconds, which eats huge processing load when decoding. In the first 2 months the developer optimized it into realtime processing. Then he threw away the old source code and wrote a faster new codec in 3 weeks with the knowledge he had gained. It uses 5 SPEs - 3 SPEs for DST decompression, and 2 SPEs for DSD to PCM conversion.

- H.264 decoding itself was not very difficult for Cell with moderate optimization and they could play a movie in realtime at the first try unlike very difficult SACD optimization. However, because they began the development without knowing the final Blu-ray standard, they set the goal very high for decoding 2 full HD H.264 streams at 40Mbps simultaneously. Besides the clockspeed of the devkit was lower than the final product which made the development difficult. The current decoder can decode full HD H.264 with 3 SPEs.

Does the PS3 OS allow explicit allocation of SPEs to different Apps? It certainly put some constraints to those apps as well in that case. I dubt they will allow third part apps to run in parallel with film movies.

Anyway I just joined the B3D team so I am already putting my PS3 to some good use. :smile:

 

[patsu]

Sony really needs to do some viral marketing already; those 16464 ps3s are just a fraction of owners.

We'll find out how many % of PS3 owners are geeks. It is not surprising if only 1% of people use PS3 actively for folding. I'm trying to see at what point the TFLOP number will plateau once the novelty wears off.

Better get it cranking while it's hot

 

[Sis]

Meanwhile... we achieved 403 TFLOP with 16464 PS3s.

That is so cool. I'll be adding to it as soon as I get home and download the update.

 

[Sis]

Sony really needs to do some viral marketing already; those 16464 ps3s are just a fraction of owners.

Holy High Expectations, Batman! The patch has been out how long? And it's not like it's a mainstream application. The output from this update is nothing short of amazing.