Got some spare CPU cyles?

Stanford University has a program for recherch on human proteins for desease such as Altzimers and Parkinsons. Read it in a MaximumPC article. Folding@home uses your computer, well, your CPU to crunch numbers and processing data to help them. If anyone's got some spare cycles, I suggest you donate.

http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

We ought to start a Snarkpit team for this.

It seems almost laughable for them to think they will ever get the processing power they need for protein folding calculations, but i guess they must know what's what.

Well I tried doing this on my 800 mhz, bad idea... it said one work unit would take me until February, so I decided to cancel that.

I used to use this program, but stopped because it always used to jam and take months and months to complete some proteins/whatever :/

Oh well, it will be more useful than GIMPS, so join the team!

http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=42236

Team number 42236

There is a government orgranization that researches the galaxy for "extra terestrials" and they also have the same type of program that uses people's computers to crunch numbers. Personally though I'd never open up my computer to any type of organization for any purposes. They might discover my secret stash of porn hidden deep within folders where no one would ever look... "steamapps".

You mean SETI? Yeah, thats been around for years. Dont worry, they wont find your porn, unless theyve written their program to search your harddrive, and people would notice stuff like that. Anyway, I doubt anyone (including the CIA/NSA) has an algorithm that could distinguish pr0n from normal pics.

Oh, but thanks for telling us where it is anyway. :biggrin:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting wil5on</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext> Anyway, I doubt anyone (including the CIA/NSA) has an algorithm that could distinguish pr0n from normal pics.

</DIV></DIV>
actually i think such algorithms exist (for tracing kiddie pron e.g.) all they do is look for more then a certain treshold of "skin" colour. Sure it'll miss out or find crap too much, but it gives clues to search further.

There is a government orgranization that researches the galaxy for "extra terestrials"

"The SETI Institute is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1984
(California Corporation #1261957). The Institute is a scientific and
educational organization governed by the provisions of Section
501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and the Institute's
Federal identification number for reporting and tax purposes is
94-2951356."

That is to say, its a private company, not a government body. I used
to have it till I reformatted recently. The novelty of it working away
in the background wore off and it just became another one of those
programs I switch off but never get round to deleting.

I like the sound of Folding@home though, and I'm sure my all powerful home computer will speed up their research by decades. :razz: Every little helps though, I'll download it at home and join the team.

[UPDATE] Installed it:

<pre>Due time: April 2 19:51:20

:biggrin:

</pre>

Oh, there are several distributed projects like these. A few months ago
a friend of mine introduced me to 'the scene', as there are actually
whole groups competeting each other with their amount of output...

There's also GIMPS (prime search, which I recently stopped doing as it takes months to output a result) and UD (which does more protein folding for cancer, anthrax etc.) and distributed.net (which does number factoring and encryption).

One for compiling maps would be handy :smile:

I may be wrong but i heard of a program like this so other people's
idle computers help slower computers compile BSP - everyone gets proggy
and they get help compiling when they need it... heard it from someone
no idea if it exists

Yeah there was a distributed compile thing a while ago that worked like
one of these websites I believe, but its not around anymore I don't
think. Once people get the new distributed compile tools figured out
then we might see a reappearance I guess.

I've joined the snarkpit team for this folding thingy, but it looks
like I'll only get a single WU done if I keep it going at 100% CPU
usage till thursday evening :sad:

I'm already crunching work units for the RC5-72 project. (http://www.distributed.net)

I'll be able to spare quite a few when I get my new AMD 64 system in a couple of months.

Edit: I am on as Alex.

SETI won't find your porn, they can't even find some god-damn aliens, for s**t's sake! I could find aliens all over the place... they talk to me you know... In my head...

ohhh, I'm doing it too... according to my computer it'll take until FEB
1st, not very cool if you ask me! but I'll do it for kicks and giggles!
my AMD 2400+ is embaressing me :sad:

Heh, my Athlon XP 2500+ has been crunching away at 100% for about 5 days straight now (including nights) and managed the TINKER core with 400 frames in about 2 days and a half and now finishing up the AMBER core with 50 frames. Got about a hour left, to which its been almost 2 days.

My stats: http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=Pilot_-_AMD

lol, i just checked again and it went down to the 26th... what's with
that? of course it DID say estimated time remaining, so it was probably
not benchmarked to it's funn capasity. it being my cpu

Updated: Now it's down to the 25th...

What it does is measures the length of time it took to do the last frame, and makes an estimate on that.

SETI finished ages ago! Didn't anyone watch the news? All that time wasted just to send some crappy signal to some planet.

Heh, I'm still on the Gathering of Tweakers team, Holy Cows sub-team. I
don't really bother actually, I just have a prog running on the
background taking my unused CPU-power.

Now we talk about it, what's our rank? Mhh, let me dig up those links...

*mumbles something about [size=10]forgotten password and paper located at (34, 5, 16) in room...*

umm, let me recalculate that position... some sketches got in the way...

[/size]

You know its probably my fault and all... Ok, so it was going on almost 7 days straight of CPU hell and it gave out. System froze, and then monitor went on stand-by. I restarted, re-launched folding@home and after 15 minutes, same thing.

I've now reduced CPU to about 60% and we'll see how that goes.

Im guessing its related to the 6 days of pure hell the CPU has gone through. Question. What would cause this exactly? And is there chance of permanent damage?

I figure its not overheating since both the inside of the case and the CPU heatsink are cold. I have 5 case fans plus the PSU fan going at full speed (and loudness too) with a Silent Boost HSF rated for a XP 3400+ and IM operating a 2500+

Thanks,

mine did the same thing

I think I know what was causing it.

I had CPU usage at 100%, just like it had been for the last 6 days. But I had decreased the save time from about 10 minutes to every 3 minutes, and increased the re-draw rate from lowest to highest.

I dont know how that affects it all, but I've droped it back to defaults now and its been working for 20 minutes. Gonna shower and hopefully its still gonna work.

And yes, you did need to know I was going to take a shower :biggrin:

I've set to screensaver, so When i'm doing stuff, it dont slow me down.

If only i could get that other PC back, my old 333mhz pc, That would be interesting to sit there and run at 80% CPU...