Folding@home, F@h Part Deux

I don't think it can be explained any better than how they do it on the site:

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Hello George

Folding is a biological process.
Proteins help your body break down food into energy, regulate your moods, and fight disease. Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." Studying these Folds is a way to research and develop cures for cancers.. such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers by simply running a piece of software on your computer.

That is Folding @Home.

The problems we are trying to solve require so many calculations, we ask people to donate their unused computer power to crunch some of the numbers.

Hope that was short enough

More info Folding @Home

Edit: I was paraphrasing as Gal replied

Edited by boopme, 19 October 2013 - 09:07 AM.

You *boop*ed me!  

I knew about the folding of proteins and RNA etc.but I didn't know about the supercomputer. Thanks to you all.

It is a little funny to see this here. I was part of a folding project back in 1999 or 2000. May be the same one mebe not.

At one time I had 5 computers running just for Folding and the SETI project also.

Had not heard much about folding since then.

Great idea and a worthwhile cause.  But I think some people began miss using that technology to build bot nets.

JMO of course but the time frames were pretty close as I remember it.

9 mins to fold at full power. Just kinda pushes my psu :{.

I downloaded it for the first time this morning and ran it for ~7 hours while I was at school, and nowhere on my PC was there a temperature above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. I have an Intel core i5-4440, 8 GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 750 Ti SC.

So far I have a score of about 3500 and 2 WU. I used Medium power.

Edited by gigawert, 16 May 2016 - 05:40 PM.

Just started folding again a little over 48 hours ago for the BC Team, it's still hard to believe, a score of 1,305,115 & in 7th place!

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=38444

What makes it more amazing, the totals doesn't show instant, so more to come, is that it took only 59 work units to achieve (by a long shot, the lowest in the top 20). 

Machine specs, main rig built in 2016.

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/z3RTAMnjqviq1qoNsMakgUy

Whoever says a GTX 1070 is a middle of the road GPU has little idea of what they're speaking of, no one were getting over a half a million PPD in 2010-11 on a single PC on the team. Today, it's easy peasy, the majority with GPU power alone!

Back then, took me 1.5 years to get just under 5,000,000 points (w7forums.com), running three computers. The bottom two teams were typos on my part, entered the wrong number, as can be seen by the resemblance.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=catilley1092

With a little luck, may get that far in a week with this machine!

Cat

Have busted the 2 Million mark after only 4 days!

http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=catilley1092&teamnum=38444

Believe the Team has moved up a notch also, was at 277 when I began, now at 274!

Anyone interested? Folding@Home now offers the opportunity to fold via the browser only, which wasn't there when I last participated. Had nearly 5 Million points over a 1.5 year span with three older computers, looks like I'll come close to breaking that mark in a week to 8 days at the current PPD. 

Once I reach that milestone, than am going to take a day's break & add a 2nd intake fan (moving the current exhaust to the front, and use a 120mm Noctua PWM for the exhaust. To make the speed faster than what the MB's fan port provides, will use a PWM splitter on the CPU fan, this will make it run as fast as that of the tower CPU cooler, also of the Noctua brand (NH-D15). 

Also will install the thermal pads that shipped later per request in the GTX 1070 just to be sure of best cooling & may delid CPU & go liquid metal. May or may not overclock, as the i7-4790K runs at 4.0GHz stock, with a Turbo of 4.4GHz, also has extra transistors versus the CPU it took the place of (i7-4770K), which ran at 3.5GHz with 3.9GHz boost. The Devil's Canyon refresh CPU's are the best of the Haswell lineup, the 4790K considered the cream of the crop. While the Haswell-E choices are more powerful, none runs at a base of 4.0GHz, oddly the top dog (i7-5860) runs at a lower frequency (3.0GHz) than it's lower cost siblings, but does have 8 cores. 

I did want Haswell-E when performing this build, unusually for me, went against my gut feeling after speaking with a friend over it. At that time, total cost of a i7-5830 (6 core) & X99 MB wasn't a lot more in cost, today much higher. Had I known the importance of the 40 PCIe lanes, wouldn't had discussed with anyone, would had pulled the trigger & overclocked the CPU to i7-4790K specs. Plus was one of the last to have a soldered on IHS to die, this makes cooling much better, no need for delidding, liquid metal & taking the chance in doing so to achieve best cooling performance. 

Anyway, looks like am going to get some great production from this setup, maybe a bit more at cooler temps should my upgrades goes OK.

Anyone interested in joining the team for a good cause, come on in! There's Linux installers, both 32 & 64 bit available for most distros, in addition to doing so with the browser option.

http://folding.stanford.edu/start-folding/

Cat

Edited by cat1092, 26 March 2018 - 01:09 AM.

Finally broke the 5 Million mark & am in 3rd place on this Team!

http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=38444

And 10 Million added together.

http://fah-web2.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=catilley1092

https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/search.php

It's fair to say that by now, am in the top 1% on the site. Have stopped a bit for now, need to improve cooling a bit, as had a couple of heat related BSOD's along the 8 day journey, could had completed in a week. Lost precious GPU work that was near completion then these took place, Will ad an intake & side fan, improve exhaust & delid CPU to improve the cooling of the chip. Will also remove the GPU & install the optional thermal pads that EVGA sent to GTX 1070 owners, plus re-paste that die while there.

Will be back soon!

Cat

Thanks, boopme!

One other thing I need to look at is my next electric bill, will then see how much folding that can be done w/out a major impact.

Fortunately, the last two generations of NVIDIA GPU's produces more gaming or number crunching power, while at the same time, using less energy. Plus the i7-4790K isn't a power hog like some of those I used in the past, which doubled in the cold months as a space heater.

By the time the I get the work done on the PC, the next electric bill will have came in, this will let me know how much I can contribute. BTW, the team moved up 3-4 slots during the 8 days while folding, one of which had stopped entirely, a couple of the others not much. Once inside of the top 200 teams, it then becomes harder than ever to move, unless several on the team are contributing.

Thank goodness for modern hardware, would had loved to have had all three rigs going at once, yet I knew that would use a lot of energy. Being on disability income, don't have the resources of over a decade back, if so, would allow all, plus a couple more in CPU mode only, to let the good times roll!

Cat