"If you're the lucky owner of a PlayStation 3" Is there such a thing?

I am happy that it is a folding monster, but at anything else its an overpriced lame duck.

You dont have to be lucky, they are all over the place, usually with big signs saying PLEASE BUY ONE....or ummm I mean we have them in stock only $599.

"If you're the lucky owner of a PlayStation 3", nice one ;)

I find it amusing that they quickly got F@H ready for the european launch of the PS3, since they crippled it as a gaming device you can use it to F@H is the theory I guess, except that AFAIK almost no europeans are interesting in making medicine manufacturers rich over the back of ill people really, o well, another sony blooper then eh.

The project leader of FAH mentioned the following in a discussion about GPU/PS3 vs SMP/regular client...

"I think the fundamental misunderstanding is that FAH doesn't do just one type of calculation, but does many, many types, and not all types are sped up on all platforms. What makes the GPU clients and PS3 clients so fast is not universal. They do certain types of calculations (implicit solvent) very quickly (20x to 40x faster), but can't do other types of calculations at all (eg explicit solvent, where the SMP client is kicking ass).
We have been pushing multiple technologies in order to take advantage of the best of what's available, using each technology where it's most useful. If we only had GPU's, FAH would fail, as we couldn't do important explicit solvent simulations (eg important for our drug design efforts and folding efforts). If we only had PC clients, we would lose out on what we could do with GPU's.
FLOPS can look impressive, but there's lots more to the story than just how many FLOPS a client can do. In terms of scientific results, I think our papers, results, and awards give some sense of what we've been able to do and the impact we've had so far, but I'm always most excited about where we're going, not just what we've done so far. The future is looking particularly exciting!"
http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?p=171543&highlight...

Ok, I just posted the following at Ars, but I think is worth reposting it here:
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Power use & electrical cost
1) PS3 power use while folding - most report around 200 to 220 (this is also roughly what an average PC uses while folding). The GPU is only lightly being used, BluRay, audio, usb, etc not used at all. And I suspect (as does Sony for putting this out) that this is unlikely to make a significant difference in the life of the unit.
2) Will look at worst case - PS3 never powered on vs PS3 running folding 24/7 for a year. For idle and standby power use, can check http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-4.htm
3) Most of the power use (over 90%) is turned into heat.
4) Power cost varies substantially. .04 to .12 $/kWh applies in most place in North America, and somewhat more in Europe.
So 210 watts is about 150 kWh/month.
At .05 $/kWh this is $90 yearly
At .10 $/kWh this is $180 yearly
And at .20 $/kWh this is $360 yearly

Heat:
When this is running in a room with AC running, the AC has to work harder to get rid of the heat (and effectively roughly double the power use).
When this is running in a room with heating running, this will reduce the heating required. Depending on the source of heating, this could significantly lower the net cost of heating+power use (especially if using electric baseboards).

Notice that folding teams normally are stronger in the winter months and significantly weaker in summer months. This is a major part of that reason. There is no reason why PS3 owners can follow a similar pattern (i.e. always fold when the heat is wanted, don't fold when have to AC the room).

Power source and environmental consideration:
The source of electricity is also worthy of consideration. Power that is carbon based (e.g. coal, oil, etc.) is usually on-demand so there is a direct correlation. Of course if using the PS3 as a heat source to aid an oil heated house...
Some power sources, like nuclear, have a fairly steady power supply, no matter what the demand. If folding just during the low demand time, then the additional environmental impact is minimal.

Ah, but nothing beats my P3-1000 file/print/firewall server, which happens to spend its time folding whenever it's not busy with anything else. :)

Lots of computing power under the hood there.

Can the PS3 client be left to fold in the background like on the PC? I cant imagine people staying with the project if this isn't so.

Now if GPU's are that great why didn't they use the GPU in all those PS3's instead of or in addition to the Cell ?

Or has FAH gotten themselves in a too deep mess weighting numbers to make contributing H/W vendors happy ?

I wonder what these new PS3 folder's electric bills will be next month...then check back in August when it gets really hot, with the AC cranked, and the PS3 folding away...and the power meeter just spinning like mad.

Excellent analysis here:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070326-why-the-playstation-3...

GPU is still king here. Article explains why, and also answers your question Wof :P

Haha "embarrassingly parallel workloads" is a nice way to put this. Also something to keep in mind is that the PCs used here can vary in specs greatly, some of them might be old 90s junk PCs lol, also they usually don't run as "dedicated" folding machines...

Good creative marketing opportunity though, can't fault them there.

Finally got to check it out with my PS3 over the weekend, and complete a few units, and am now actively back with 2630.

But I'm sure, for many people, they'll try it out for a bit, and the may not stay active for extended periods of time.

I don't like the way I left it on for a day and a half, straight.

Let me come out first and say that I was wrong last week, folding on the PS3, according to these numbers, seems very energy efficient (given the 180~200W usage under load) in comparison to normal CPUs, and it would be great if at least some of that 160,000+ slow CPUs could be replaced by (turned off in favor of) PS3s of the same energy consumption.

Why the Playstation 3 owns the PC in F@H
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070326-why-the-playstation-3...

That's pretty neat! Hopefully PS3 owners keep it on and let it run a la google toolbar users. Or whatever.

Finally, a good use for all those PS3's on the shelf at WalMart.

FAH for Wii? What they lack in horsepower they can makeup for with sheer numbers!! =)

Mom can I buy a device that helps to cure Cancer?
Sure! Hey wait, what's GTA4
Oh uh.....it's a type of cancer. Like GTA3, you heard how bad that was for people.

I guess that's not too surprising - the simple but numerous Cell cores can very well deal with a fairly low-complexity task that needs to be run over and over and can be work in parallel easily, like many science applications. It's the same reason that GPUs work so well but only with very specific workunits. It doesn't mean anything in terms of games, of course - they're not just running through the same algorithms all the time and on independent data.

Also for the Xbox360, from rumours there has been some discussion, but it is unknown if anything will come out of it.
The Xbox360, unlike the PS3, does have a GPU that would be useful for folding (the PS3 GPU architecture isn't really compatible for that type of work). It could be quite a powerhouse because of that, but I suspect the concern is the heat generated (and warranty returns because of that). For the PS3 that isn't expected to be a problem as only the CPU cores (most of them) are working hard and the GPU isn't doing much (putting up pretty pictures).

I told you PS3 was a kickass machine.

Just a little while longer and the exclusive games will come out, then Sony can claim PS3 as the best gaming machine that just happens to cure cancer on the side.

Can the PS3 handle all work unit types, or just a select few?

Does Microsoft really want customers to run their 360 at maximum 24/7? I think that might slightly exceed their design specs and is just asking for trouble.

Also on a sidenote...efficiency of CPU, PS3 and GPUs is different.

"Just counting FLOPS can be deceptive. The GPU does a lot of FLOPS, but is less efficient with them. For example, the GPU doesn't allow a scatter (random access write) so we are forced to do some calculations twice: the force on i & j is related to the force on j & i, but saving that data requires a scatter, so we just recalc.

That's the faster way to go on the GPU, so it's the right thing to do there. It also brings the FLOPS *way* up, but it means it *requires* 2x the FLOPS just to do the same calculation."