Folding@Home for ATI GPU's!

[alvino]

Tech Report reports Folding@Home will take advantage of ATI graphics processing power in the near future. Folding@Home claims performance of 100 gigaflops per computer will be achieved by taking advantage of ATI's graphics processing power. ATI GPU support appears to only be for R5xx series of graphics processors according to the Folding@Home high performance client FAQ. The GPU powered Folding@Home client runs considerably faster on R580, Radeon X1900, X1950 series, than R520, Radeon X1800 series, most likely due to the R580's 48 pixel shaders.

NVIDIA GPUs are currently unsupported at the time as the Folding@Home project has been concentrating its efforts on ATI GPUs as the ATI GPUs perform significantly faster than current generation NVIDIA GPUs. Folding@Home also previously announced its Cure@PS3 project to take advantage of the PS3's processing power. DailyTech awaits the day Folding@Home optimizes its client for Bigfoot Networks KillerNIC.

The ATI optimized Folding@Home client is expected to arrive towards the end of September. And, of course, if you needed another reason to stock up on ATI R5xx cards, ATI is still expected to release a driver for Triple Play.

Awesome! NVIDIA cards may consume less power and help you save money on power, but nothing beats that feeling that you get when you're helping fold for a cure. You may help save someone's life. Fold@Home.

Anyhow, on a somewhat related note, the Cure@PS3 Project will bring that Folding@Home program to the PS3! So for those of you who plan to buy the PS3, put the PS3's Cell processor and RSX GPU to good use! Did I mention that the protein visualizations are in HDR? You can even use the PS3's motion sensitive controller to view different angles of the protein molecules. Sorry, no rumble is included. You might as well fold for a cure, since the PS3's high price is pushing away developers, so it would be wise to put those teraflops to some good use.

 

[X1337]

will it support my card?

 

[alvino]

Unfortunately not. R520 and R580 based cards only. Obviously, it'll run faster on the R580 based cores (X1900 XT, X1900 XTX, X1950 XTX etc), than the R520 based cards (X1800 XT etc) due to the R580's 48 pixel shaders.

Sorry, but this is for Folding@Home's high performance client.

 

[MikeReiner]

wait, confused here.. what is folding@home?

 

[alvino]

*GASP* You've never heard of Folding@Home?!

Heh, it's called distributed computing. Stanford is trying to find cures for things like Cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Mad Cow, etc. But they don't have enough computing power, so what they do is use other people's computers to help process information. Basically you install this program, and what is does is request a work unit from Stanford's servers, and when you get it, your computer immediately devotes all of it's resources to computing that. Of course, if you're doing other things, it won't impact that. When you're done with a work unit, it's sent back to the servers.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Folding@Home For A Cure.

EDIT>>> My description isn't too clear and might be a bit incorrect, so here is Folding@Home's Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@Home

 

[mammikoura]

gonna use alot more electricity since gpus require alot of power. But still, a very good thing, should have a big decrease in the time spent counting work units.

 

[root]

gonna use alot more electricity since gpus require alot of power. But still, a very good thing, should have a big decrease in the time spent counting work units.

I agree... I fold for the cancer project, (which was around before folding @home which was originally seti@home before the bonic framework came and made it able to fold a lot more things that radiowaves and protien structures!!

I used to get a warm fuzzy feeling to say hey My PC is helping to cure cancer, and I used to leave it on all night... using electricity, which no doubt came from fossil fuel burning power stations, that release thousands of carsonagens into the atmosphere, or a nuclear power station, who's isotopes have caused cancer and what nots in the people around it...

the whole use electricity to search for a cancer cure thing is kind of an odd argument...

the clock on my projetc indicator says I've put close to five years of folding into the project... that's five years or on-time...

I agree that if your computer would be on anyway (like if it's serving something), then you may as well give up theextra clock cycles...

but encouraging people to leave appliances on...
next there will have to be a folding projec to combat global warming or something!

 

[mammikoura]

next there will have to be a folding projec to combat global warming or something!

There already are some projects like this. Like climate prediction which is trying to see how different levels of carbon dioxide or sulphate etc affect the temperatures, amount of rain etc.
I was doing it for a while, and might start again, but had some problems with the project restarting so I didn't bother.
And though an active computer uses more electricity than an idle one I'm still going to keep on running the boinc projects. I don't keep my computer on just to run boinc, if I'm not downloading anything I'll close the computer when I go to sleep and when I go to school.

 

[Kage]

Thats a kewl idea

Root, why do you have two reputation bars?
Haha, never mind. I found a thread about it

 

[alvino]

Argh, now all the enviromentalists are trying to hijack this thread.