News Folding@Home's Exascale Compute Power Helped Unravel Covid's Secrets

[Admin]

An article in Nature Chemistry revealed the impact Folding@Home has had on mapping SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

Folding@Home's Exascale Compute Power Helped Unravel Covid's Secrets : Read more

 

[digitalgriffin]

F@H is available on multiple platforms, not just windows.

Instead of a mad cash grab built on nothing (crypto), consider helping humanity instead.

During the past year running on a Ryzen 2400g on unraid, I have contributed well over edit 10, 340,000 points work putting me in the top 3% of all contributors. The addition to my power bill was minimal. I worked it out to be about $37/year running 24/7. (Based on increase in power 65 standby watts versus 95 active watts at 12 cents per kWh)

To help humanity, that is a small price to pay.

 

[epobirs]

Running F@H on a GPU is far more effective, enough so that I stopped bothering with the CPUs at all. This made keeping the cooling issues under control a lot easier. The down side is my power bill, in the expensive southern CA region, could easily double or triple if I ran all three GPUs among my machines around the clock. Currently that's an RX460 in my main desktop, an RX580 in a less used machine, and an RTX2060 in my gaming system. The RTX2060 is about 3X the effectiveness of the RX580 and about 5X more effective than the RX460. The difference is that the machine with the 460 is the most likely to be on 24/7 for reasons other than folding, and the 460 has a fairly modest power draw, living entirely off bus power with no direct link to the PSU.

I'd run the RTX card more often if I could afford the power bill. The heat also becomes a concern as we head into summer.

As of this moment, this has contributed 110, 543, 803 points to my team (organized by game developer Mark Kern, mostly on Twitter) over a bit more than a year, with a ranking of 17,602 out of 2,875,180 active donors, if I'm reading it correctly. It comes as a bit of a shock to me that I made it so high, considering the far more muscular GPUs out there.
https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/69377446

 

[epobirs]

Here is a rundown of the recorded performance of GPUs for Folding@home:
https://folding.lar.systems/gpu_ppd/overall_ranks

The link on the same page to CPU performance shows how dramatic the difference is.

 

[Fade123]

I have contributed well over 2,000,000 points work putting me in the top 3% of all contributors.

Did you mean 2,000,000,000 points? 2,000,000 points is kinda normal PPD (Points per Day), myself I have contributed with about 245,000,000 points. A friend of mine has contributed insane 49,700,000,000 points!

 

[digitalgriffin]

Did you mean 2,000,000,000 points? 2,000,000 points is kinda normal PPD (Points per Day), myself I have contributed with about 245,000,000 points. A friend of mine has contributed insane 49,700,000,000 points!

You are right.

10,340,000. But that's just CPU power not the Apu side. There are no iGPU drivers for AMD on unraid. Nvidia yes. AMD no. That's still enough to stick me in the top 3% of contributors in a year's time.

I could run a VM on my pfSense which has a 3400g. But the less I have running on the router the more secure and faster it is.

 

[RTX 2080]

Instead of a mad cash grab built on nothing (crypto), consider helping humanity instead.

This 100%. I have an RTX 2080 and started contributing 24/7 to folding@home in February of 2020. I actually bought a RTX 2060 KO a few months later so that I could contribute even more. Unfortunately, I had to quit this past January of 2021 (and sell my RTX 2060) due to my super high power bills being a financial strain, but I refuse to use it to mine cryptocurrency like so many people do. It's a stupid waste of resources; imagine the good that could be done if even half the GPUs being used for cryptocurrency were instead running folding@home.

 

[spongiemaster]

Did you mean 2,000,000,000 points? 2,000,000 points is kinda normal PPD (Points per Day), myself I have contributed with about 245,000,000 points. A friend of mine has contributed insane 49,700,000,000 points!

The way points are awarded has changed drastically over the years making it far easier to accumulate points today. The poster epobirs above has 110,598,213 pts while completing 3,706 work units. That's a solid contribution. However, the #1 contributor for Tomshardware's team (who hasn't been active for quite a while) has completed 485,465 work units while only totaling 61 million points. Half the points for 131 times the work units completed should give you an idea how much scoring has changed. Looking at the link above for GPU performance, if you have a 3090 and you fold for just one week, you'd almost be in the top 2% (2.16%) for overall points. The point totals are meaningless to the researchers analyzing the results. What really matters is work units completed. Every little bit helps, but folding on a CPU is pretty worthless today compared to the efficiency and speed of GPU's.

 

[RTX 2080]

The way points are awarded has changed drastically over the years making it far easier to accumulate points today. The poster epobirs above has 110,598,213 pts while completing 3,706 work units. That's a solid contribution. However, the #1 contributor for Tomshardware's team (who hasn't been active for quite a while) has completed 485,465 work units while only totaling 61 million points. Half the points for 131 times the work units completed should give you an idea how much scoring has changed. Looking at the link above for GPU performance, if you have a 3090 and you fold for just one week, you'd almost be in the top 2% (2.16%) for overall points. The point totals are meaningless to the researchers analyzing the results. What really matters is work units completed. Every little bit helps, but folding on a CPU is pretty worthless today compared to the efficiency and speed of GPU's.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but actually the reason why modern hardware earns so much more points than hardware in the past did is not because the scoring system has changed, its actually because it has stayed the same.

Allow me to explain. The reason that it is easier to earn more points faster today is because points earned per work unit increase significantly the faster a work unit is finished. If a work unit is completed in one hour instead of two, significantly more than double the points are rewarded for doing it in half the time. The faster a researcher can get a work unit back, the quicker the data can be analyzed; this is why the point system has been set up this way, to incentivise running the fastest hardware as quickly and consistently as possible. Theoretically, the point system could have been set up so that the same amount of points are assigned per completed work unit regardless of how quickly it is finished or that there is a 1:1 progression ratio between time taken to complete a work unit and points rewarded, but instead it was set up to be significantly more rewarding the faster your CPU or GPU can complete a work unit. Thus, the reason powerful modern GPUs can earn the same amount of points in significantly less time than those who have done this for a long time (but on older hardware) is simply a product of the way points are rewarded and have been rewarded all along.

 

[spongiemaster]

I understand the point you are trying to make, but actually the reason why modern hardware earns so much more points than hardware in the past did is not because the scoring system has changed, its actually because it has stayed the same.

Allow me to explain. The reason that it is easier to earn more points faster today is because points earned per work unit increase significantly the faster a work unit is finished. If a work unit is completed in one hour instead of two, significantly more than double the points are rewarded for doing it in half the time. The faster a researcher can get a work unit back, the quicker the data can be analyzed; this is why the point system has been set up this way, to incentivise running the fastest hardware as quickly and consistently as possible. Theoretically, the point system could have been set up so that the same amount of points are assigned per completed work unit regardless of how quickly it is finished or that there is a 1:1 progression ratio between time taken to complete a work unit and points rewarded, but instead it was set up to be significantly more rewarding the faster your CPU or GPU can complete a work unit. Thus, the reason powerful modern GPUs can earn the same amount of points in significantly less time than those who have done this for a long time (but on older hardware) is simply a product of the way points are rewarded and have been rewarded all along.

Quick return bonuses were not a thing when F@H started. They were introduced 10 years after initial launch. QRB's also have a few requirements before they kick in, including requiring a passkey, returning at least 10 bonus eligible units and returning 80% or more assigned WU's within their time limits. GPU folding has seen significant evolution since its introduction, which again wasn't from day 1. It's only been in recent years that GPU's have basically killed off CPU's as useful folding agents. Nvidia's CUDA driver last year added 15-30% to the PPD for Nvidia GPU's. The folding team will also give extra bonuses to WU's from certain projects deemed higher priority which let's all say it again, has not always been the case.

 

[RTX 2080]

Quick return bonuses were not a thing when F@H started. They were introduced 10 years after initial launch. QRB's also have a few requirements before they kick in, including requiring a passkey, returning at least 10 bonus eligible units and returning 80% or more assigned WU's within their time limits. GPU folding has seen significant evolution since its introduction, which again wasn't from day 1. It's only been in recent years that GPU's have basically killed off CPU's as useful folding agents. Nvidia's CUDA driver last year added 15-30% to the PPD for Nvidia GPU's. The folding team will also give extra bonuses to WU's from certain projects deemed higher priority which let's all say it again, has not always been the case.

That makes sense; I wasn't aware that there have been changes over the years.

Heck, when folding with my RTX 2080, if I get a WU with a base reward of roughly 50,000 points, I'll usually end up getting 200,000 points total upon completion, meaning that my quick return bonus is worth 3x as much as the base amount.

And as you said, GPUs (which can accomplish work units significantly faster than CPUs) have basically killed off CPUs as useful folding agents. Some of the people who have a large number of work units completed compared to points earned made a large amount of their points by folding with CPUs.

 

[javiindo]

After all the work done during pandemy in the folding computer system, at the end we are paying the vaccins to the private company. From a coronavirus point of view, it was useless all that energy.
Maybe someone understand better the virus, but the private companys without that supercomputer were able to find a solution.

 

[RTX 2080]

After all the work done during pandemy in the folding computer system, at the end we are paying the vaccins to the private company. From a coronavirus point of view, it was useless all that energy.
Maybe someone understand better the virus, but the private companys without that supercomputer were able to find a solution.

The work done by folding@home for COVID-19 was intended to be open source so that anyone could use it. Undoubtedly, data generated by folding@home was used to achieve a greater understanding of the virus for the many people working on a vaccine. In addition, the primary aim of the folding@home COVID-19 project is not a vaccine, but an anti-viral drug. Several companies have created vaccines, but as far as I know nobody has yet created a treatment for those who have already contracted COVID-19. This is why the folding@home COVID-19 project is still ongoing.

 

[Unolocogringo]

When Folding first started is was one point for each work unit completed. Did not matter if it took 3 days or 2 weeks to complete. You still got 1 point.
Then they started Big Advantage which was for 8+ CPU core systems and QRB system started.
Then GPU folding started and everything changed.
I'm lucky in that we have cheap Hydro electric power available in my area. So I can still run older systems and not worry about CO2 emissions from fossil fuel derived electricity.
I run
EVGA GTX 960 FTW
Gigabyte GTX 1060 6gb Gamer
EVGA GTX 1070 SC
FE RTX 3060ti
Which nets on average 5,000,000 PPD or 20-25 work units per day.
Although the new 18202 work units points seem extremely low and hurt averages.

Thank You to everyone who folds.

 

[Unolocogringo]

There are several new nasal sprays in testing now.
One appears to a vaccine/treatment combo.

After all the work done during pandemy in the folding computer system, at the end we are paying the vaccins to the private company. From a coronavirus point of view, it was useless all that energy.
Maybe someone understand better the virus, but the private companys without that supercomputer were able to find a solution.

ALL of the data from folding is available to ALL companies/scientist/universities to use in their research.
Otherwise we would probably still be looking for a vaccine.

 

[epobirs]

After all the work done during pandemy in the folding computer system, at the end we are paying the vaccins to the private company. From a coronavirus point of view, it was useless all that energy.
Maybe someone understand better the virus, but the private companys without that supercomputer were able to find a solution.

Folding@Home has been running for many years and the results available to all. (I ran it on a bunch of systems under my control as an IT guy as a screen savers back in the early days but didn't bother trying to revive my old account when I joined my team last year.) Since the start in October of 2000 this means researchers have gotten a LOT of data from the project. It seems very likely that F@H over that two decade span contributed in some way to the rapid vaccine development by advancing the field before this specific need arose. This new standard for vaccine development will continue to benefit from the deeper understanding F@H enables on an ongoing basis. If you are concerned about power efficiency, there are people who've done the work to find best balance.

Folding@Home Efficiency vs. GPU Power Limit

Folding@Home: The Need for Efficiency Distributed computing projects like Stanford University’s Folding@Home sometimes get a bad rap on account of all the power that is consumed in the name o…

greenfoldingathome.com