Folding@Home How often?

[Petra_Kalbrain]

Originally Posted by Footloose301

Forgive me for being ignorant, but what is folding? I clicked on it assuming people were talking about folding their clothes or something as was about to tell them that they're in the wrong thread.

FOLDING@HOME is a program that utilizes a global network of CPU power to solve extremely advanced scientific calculations regarding the proteins that account for most major diseases. By offering up the CPU power of the PS3 console, your home PC, and/or other server devices, Stanford University will be able to study the results and hopefully discover ways to hinder the growth of diseases, preventative measures for diseases, or even cures for diseases. The PS3 version of the program even has a nice graphic element to its functionality that has a rotating 3D representation of the planet. On this graphic it also has small dots showing the different concentrations of contributing systems from the entire planets population. When I tell people about the program they think, "Well, there can't be many people wasting their time with this BS." So, I show them the graphic representation and they are blown away by how much effort THE ENTIRE PLANET is putting into this research. It is not only astounding, it also sparks a sense of hope that, despite all of the agressively destructive aspects of human politics, at the basic level we are all still striving to better our existence as a HUMAN RACE instead of only as geographically isolated communities.

[whippersnapper]

Originally Posted by smiley

I try to let my computer fold 24/7 exept it folds a couple work units then gets in a loop where it starts downloading then says waiting for retry. It seems to do this for a couple days then does a couple more work units. Over all it seem to spend more time waiting for downloads as it does folding. I have a 3Mb/sec connection to the internet. That should be an issue so I am not sure what causes this.
What is the score devrived from? Looks like most people with the same number of work units as me have a lot higher score:
63 StevesPS3 3731 13
64 Bob 3250 11
65 movies3 3080 11
66 Jin-wu 2870 10
67 Smiley 2671 14
68 klr39 2611 9
69 PS3simon 2498 8

Looks like most people with the same number of work units as me have a lot higher score

Smiley, I've noticed that also. This is pure speculation on my part but I think that the central servers that send out work units to be worked base their selection of WU on past experience with the individual computer. If a computer (or PS3 - same thing) routinely downloads the work cleanly, they select it for bigger WUs. If a computer has a history of having to restart downloads, they may allocate the smaller WUs to it. Pure speculation on my part. There's a forum at folding@home where the answer might be found; I've just never had the time to go there.

[Footloose301]

Originally Posted by Petra_Kalbrain

FOLDING@HOME is a program that utilizes a global network of CPU power to solve extremely advanced scientific calculations regarding the proteins that account for most major diseases. By offering up the CPU power of the PS3 console, your home PC, and/or other server devices, Stanford University will be able to study the results and hopefully discover ways to hinder the growth of diseases, preventative measures for diseases, or even cures for diseases. The PS3 version of the program even has a nice graphic element to its functionality that has a rotating 3D representation of the planet. On this graphic it also has small dots showing the different concentrations of contributing systems from the entire planets population. When I tell people about the program they think, "Well, there can't be many people wasting their time with this BS." So, I show them the graphic representation and they are blown away by how much effort THE ENTIRE PLANET is putting into this research. It is not only astounding, it also sparks a sense of hope that, despite all of the agressively destructive aspects of human politics, at the basic level we are all still striving to better our existence as a HUMAN RACE instead of only as geographically isolated communities.

Wow, that is pretty cool. Thanks for explaining. I'm surprised how many of you guys are doing this.

[actionhank]

Originally Posted by Footloose301

Forgive me for being ignorant, but what is folding? I clicked on it assuming people were talking about folding their clothes or something as was about to tell them that they're in the wrong thread.

From how i understand it all the proteins in your body fold into different shapes. Diseases happen when a protein "misfolds." So to find a cure or way to prevent these diseases, scientists at Stanford are studying how proteins fold in the first place. To do this they need to simulate it. But this "folding" happens really really quickly, as fast as a millionth of a second. It takes about a day to simulate a nanosecond (1/1,000,000,000 of a second). Unfortunately, proteins fold on the tens of microsecond timescale (10,000 nanoseconds). Thus, it would take 10,000 CPU days to simulate folding -- i.e. it would take 30 CPU years! That's a long time to wait for one result!

Thats where a lot of computers and the PS3 come in. By cutting up the simulations into chunks and giving each CPU that participates a piece or "work unit" we can all help. A finished work unit is sent over the internet to the Stanford University servers

The cell processor in the PS3 is especially good at doing work units. In fact it's about 20 to 30 times faster than an average Pentium PC. Sony has partnered with Stanford so you can easily "fold@home" by just clicking an icon on your PS3.

Some of the diseases they are trying to cure are alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, Mad Cow, emphesyma and some forms of cancer. So its best to help out, you never know when you'll be the one eating the mad beef from a mad cow.