Folding@Home for Trinity

real_ate

Hey everyone!

I'm just coming on here to announce the creation of a Folding@Home team for anyone from trinity, alumni or in fact anyone who wants to join

If any of you don't know what folding@home is then there a great lot of information here: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ

Once you've downloaded the client and you're ready to start folding you will need to set your team number to 116767 which will make you join the TCD folding team.

If you want to see how the team is getting on just go to http://kakaostats.com/tr.php?t=116767 and check out how many teams we are passing out a day ( or how many teams are passing us out ).

We need all the help we can get if we want to bring those stats up to anything reasonable so get folding today!!!

real_ate

Oh and just to let you know... My goal for this Folding@Home team is to make it ( at least ) into the top 6000 teams out there! That would mean that our team would make it to the really cool stats page here: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_list.php?s=&p=60 .

We are currently ranked 11,816th which isn't so bad considering we're the 116,767th team to join! With a whole load of help we can easily bring our rank down to 6000 very soon!

Happy Folding!

Jonathan

Get the CS dept to throw it on their machines.

They are in no way concerned with power conservation (computers are left on in the locked ICT huts over the summer months) so I doubt they would even care.

real_ate

Getting the CS department to do anything with those machines is like pulling teeth! I tried before but man were they hard work!

Does anyone here know anybody in the CS department that they might be able to convince? I'm also no longer in college ( as of last week, woot! ) so i won't be around to bug them on this ya know?

and on a separate note... do you fold Jonathan? lol

Jonathan

real_ate wrote: »

and on a separate note... do you fold Jonathan? lol

Nope. I don't pay the ESB bill at home.

real_ate

Jonathan wrote: »

Nope. I don't pay the ESB bill at home.

There must be a way to schedule it to only come on for a little time during the day? that way you could add as much as you wanted and every little helps

EGaffney

This looks like a good cause. I've been looking for something to which I can donate my CPU cycles since I stopped looking for Mersenne primes, and it seems a bit more beneficial than Seti@home.

real_ate

EGaffney wrote: »

and it seems a bit more beneficial than Seti@home.

I definitely agree with you there It will take a very long time to get the results that they need by doing this folding but at least you're guaranteed to get the results eventually! Who knows about those little green men chatting back to us!

real_ate

EGaffney wrote: »

I've been looking for something to which I can donate my CPU cycles

Oh and i hope to see you on the trinity team soon! its been a bit lonely since a lot of people dropped out... see the stats here: http://kakaostats.com/t.php?t=116767

littlehedgehog

Jeanius = Me!

Cantab.

Jonathan wrote: »

Get the CS dept to throw it on their machines.

They are in no way concerned with power conservation (computers are left on in the locked ICT huts over the summer months) so I doubt they would even care.

Sorry. Too late... Those machines already have threads running in the background.

Cantab.

I use Boinc. My Quad-core 3GHz, 4 gigs of RAM is put to good use I can tell you. It's like having a 60 Watt light bulb on 18 hours a day.

real_ate

Cantab. wrote: »

I use Boinc. My Quad-core 3GHz, 4 gigs of RAM is put to good use I can tell you. It's like having a 60 Watt light bulb on 18 hours a day.

why to you tease me so! I have a similar setup and its working pretty nice for Folding, if we ganged together we could take over the world!! :P lol

anyway, in all seriousness, its better for people to be involved in projects like this for the greater good than for them not to be. And in all fairness it doesn't really matter what "Greater Good" you're working for

I'm really just a bit of a stats freak and would love to see the TCD team get up there with the bigger teams ya know! Don't suppose anyone has a good idea to get the word of this team out there no?

eddhorse

Can i connect to your team using my playstation 3?

I read the link you sent, but still not sure if you can connect to certain teams.

Actually a quick google got this bad screenshot tutorial on how to connect to your team with you PS3. Ill be helping and folding later.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardwarecanucks-f-h-team/16288-quick-guide-using-your-ps3-folding-home.html

real_ate

eddhorse wrote: »

I read the link you sent, but still not sure if you can connect to certain teams.

Well the way that you connect to a particular team is you just add the team's number to your client's settings. This is described in the link that you provided in step 4: Change Identity Settings. The way to do it is go to the settings window -> Current Channel -> Identity and then you will be able to change your donor name ( to your nickname ) and you will be able to "Join an existing team"

Our team number is 116767 so once you put that into your client you will have joined the TCD team!

Hope that works for you let me know if you're having trouble.

Cantab.

real_ate wrote: »

why to you tease me so! I have a similar setup and its working pretty nice for Folding, if we ganged together we could take over the world!! :P lol

anyway, in all seriousness, its better for people to be involved in projects like this for the greater good than for them not to be. And in all fairness it doesn't really matter what "Greater Good" you're working for

I'm really just a bit of a stats freak and would love to see the TCD team get up there with the bigger teams ya know! Don't suppose anyone has a good idea to get the word of this team out there no?

It would be kind of cool if there was a Trinity cloud. We could use existing software tools (such as BOINC). There are plenty of researchers around College who need computing power every once in a while. I think faffing around with protein folding and prime number searching (as I do) is a waste when the computing power could be put to more immediate use within College as opposed to outside College (College do after all pay the ESB bill).

It's not a technical problem though -- someone has to lead such an initiative. We could even make money by hiring out cpu cycles to people outside College.

There are state-of-the-art servers just ticking over in the O'Reilly building. And literally thousands of CPUs are lying idle across College.

Ron DMC

Cantab. wrote: »

It's not a technical problem though -- someone has to lead such an initiative. We could even make money by hiring out cpu cycles to people outside College.

Get to it Cantab. You seem enthusiastic about it, who better to lead the charge?

real_ate

Cantab. wrote: »

It would be kind of cool if there was a Trinity cloud.

Eh.... when it comes to a "Cloud" in trinity thats actually done already. Trinity are a major backbone of the European Grid, i think that they might even be organising some of it. When you compare cloud computing to "The Grid" its like comparing the computer on my phone with a Cray super computer! they are 2 completely different architectures and work well for their particular uses but the Grid would kick Cloud Computing's ass!!

So if you really *needed* some processing power you can apply for space on the grid.

So in the same way Folding@home is good for its current usage, doing computations that people don't feel are worth spending loads of money on. But in the process they can come up with interesting things that they didn't know, and although its not feasible to put a massive super computer to this work we are helping to further science and it is worth the effort.

Cantab.

real_ate wrote: »

Eh.... when it comes to a "Cloud" in trinity thats actually done already. Trinity are a major backbone of the European Grid, i think that they might even be organising some of it. When you compare cloud computing to "The Grid" its like comparing the computer on my phone with a Cray super computer! they are 2 completely different architectures and work well for their particular uses but the Grid would kick Cloud Computing's ass!!

So if you really *needed* some processing power you can apply for space on the grid.

So in the same way Folding@home is good for its current usage, doing computations that people don't feel are worth spending loads of money on. But in the process they can come up with interesting things that they didn't know, and although its not feasible to put a massive super computer to this work we are helping to further science and it is worth the effort.

And I've got a quad core sitting on my desk. How do I contribute to this project? I'd prefer if my CPU was going to Trinity and not some random do-gooder affair.

I don't think there's any project in Trinity where non-expert people can contribute their CPU cycles.

Jonathan

Cantab. wrote: »

There are state-of-the-art servers just ticking over in the O'Reilly building. And literally thousands of CPUs are lying idle across College.

Using idle CPU cycles costs money though.

real_ate

Cantab. wrote: »

And I've got a quad core sitting on my desk. How do I contribute to this project? I'd prefer if my CPU was going to Trinity and not some random do-gooder affair.

I don't think there's any project in Trinity where non-expert people can contribute their CPU cycles.

Eh... when you say "How do i contribute to this project?" what project are you talking about? if you are talking about Folding@Home it is very easy to get set up and there is a lot of info on http://folding.stanford.edu/ but if you are talking about contributing to the Grid I'm afraid that is simply impossible. I'm afraid thats just the way it works.

And i personally wouldn't refer to the folding@home project, which is run out of Stanford, as a "random do-gooder affair". Is this who you were referring to?

real_ate

Jonathan wrote: »

Using idle CPU cycles costs money though.

Yes it is, and that is a big deal when a large organisation is making a decision to involve all of their computers in things like this. However when it comes to us it is a simpler decision, more cut and dry as to weather you can afford to donate the CPU cycles and the ESB

And its also simply not true that there are loads of Servers in the CS department that are just being used for nothing. There is a lot of research being done on them, albeit not every second of every day but they are production machines and cannot just give away CPU time so easily. I know because I was allowed to use one for 2 weeks once, and the CS department were VERY protective of their machines ( and rightly so ).

The Folding@home project is more suited for individuals who are interested in providing their own CPU cycles and although it would be great for organisations to provide it for all of their computers it is infinitely less likely that they will do it. And this is very understandable.

eddhorse

Yep seems to have worked, had to change to advanced expert mode to get to the team name.

Current work unit = p3461_ProG_hpin
Core = ScEARD2 1.40.93520

I'll fold when i can, its all for the better good !

By the way i'd drop a link over to the Playstation forum for more help if i was you !

real_ate

eddhorse wrote: »

By the way i'd drop a link over to the Playstation forum for more help if i was you !

Thanks again for joining the team! and about dropping a link in the Playstation forum, i'm not sure if its the right place for it... The team that I set up is named Trinity College Dublin so thats why i posted in this forum, plus i don't own a playstation so i'm like a fish out of water over there;)

Any chance you could recommend the team? both to that part of the forum and also to some of your friends... cos this is where the fun part starts, we get to compete with each other to get to the top of the folding table within the team and also get to compete together to get to the top of the folding team table.

happy folding, and i hope to see you passing me out for first place in the team soon

eddhorse

No probs, ill leave it running to complete the first one tonight at 4:25 am.

And as for the link to the playstation section :
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=60921902#post60921902

Im sure there will be a few to join in.

Ed

real_ate

eddhorse wrote: »

No probs, ill leave it running to complete the first one tonight at 4:25 am.

And as for the link to the playstation section :
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=60921902#post60921902

Im sure there will be a few to join in.

Ed

Thanks man! you are a star!

Cantab.

I'll sign up for this in the morning seeing as it's for Trinity. Beats searching for prime numbers.

real_ate

Cantab. wrote: »

I'll sign up for this in the morning seeing as it's for Trinity. Beats searching for prime numbers.

Thanks Cantab! its good to have you on the team!

eddhorse

Do you have a link to see the team stats ?

I can view it on the PS3 but dont know where to look from the office?

eddhorse

Found Here :

http://kakaostats.com/ad.php?col=6&search=eddhorse


Li-
ne Donor Team Project RankingTeam Ranking Points Current 24 Hs Total
1 Eddhorse Trinity College Dublin 898,844 886,162 772,762 592,644 5 251

real_ate

eddhorse wrote: »

Do you have a link to see the team stats ?

Well there are 3 main ways to see your stats, each one has its benefits but their coolness is very measurable

The least cool : http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=116767
Good points: includes every team that has signed up
Bad points: doesn't graph any results, is always down because of the amount of connections to it.

Medium coolness: http://kakaostats.com/tr.php?t=116767
Good points: starts to graph the results so you can see how well we're doing. shows predictions of where you will be in the rankings in a day , week and month.
Bad points: the interface is clunky and hard to understand, most of the interesting pages are hidden in dropdown menus at the top of the page. Only graphs and lists the first 14000 teams ( which isn't a problem to us any more, but considering there are a total of 161131 active teams that's quite important to some people ).

Most cool: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_list.php?s=&p=60
Good points: most cool graphs. Cleanest interface. Nice prediction method. really good team spirit building ( we can see clearly how good we are doing against each other ).
Bad points: there is only one that i can think of and that is : it only graphs and lists the top 6000 teams, which is a major problem for us

That's my little guide to F@H stats. Like I said before our goal is to get onto the stats site that i call "Most Cool" above, this would be pretty impressive if we got there. Right now the "Medium Coolness" site says that we will be ranked 9,500th in 30 days so we still have a long way to go if we want to make it to 6,000.

So if we get our friends to join this team and get them to get their friends it shouldn't take too long.

in the mean time, happy folding!

Cantab.

Remember folks, it's team number 116767.

EGaffney

I got one!

My CPU may be on a laptop, it may be > 2 years old, and it may be producing enough heat to let me cook a rare steak, but it's not crashing!

real_ate

Thank you everyone for all your help and support on this! We have really picked up this team and we are now going from strength to strength because of your help! If we keep at this rate for another 7 days the prediction on Kakao says that we'll be at position 10,400 in the ranking! This simply could not be possible if it wasn't for our 2 new team members Eddhorse and gaffneep ( if anyone else has joined the team but isn't being shown on the rankings that means that they haven't submitted a finished work unit yet, keep folding and you'll be there! )

If we want to break the 10,000 mark within 7 days we need to get some more troops to join this cause, any luck on getting some friends to join anyone? I'm working on a friend of mine that has a quad core and might even be interested in doing some GPU folding, so i'll keep you all posted.

Thanks again you guys for the help and Happy Folding!

Nietzschean

things do go in circles... this was all discussed lots a few years back....
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=39432

is the boards.ie team which used to have a few tcd people involved in

using labs for such applications was also discussed to death on this very forum if you search back

real_ate

Nietzschean wrote: »

things do go in circles... this was all discussed lots a few years back....
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=39432

is the boards.ie team which used to have a few tcd people involved in

using labs for such applications was also discussed to death on this very forum if you search back

I did try and search for some reference to folding but there was nothing.... do you have a link?

Nietzschean

http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054855103&highlight=folding
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=309764&highlight=folding

its been a while when i see those post dates!

real_ate

Wow... I was away for a week and our team seems to have fizzled away you guys all still with me?

Also it seems that there is only the power of word-of-mouth that will get this team into the serious points range. any luck on anyone convincing their friends and family to join?

Also if you have 2 computers you can sign them both up and you can get more points for yourself and get yourself better in the team rankings

anyway, let me know if you guys are still here!

Adios!

littlehedgehog

I'm still here, but my computer is no longer. I am working on getting it fixed though!

real_ate

Jean wrote: »

I'm still here, but my computer is no longer. I am working on getting it fixed though!

Oh man! thats really unfortunate! I hope you get it sorted out soon!

I've also recruited one more guy to the team as well! he has just started folding and he is going to get one of his friends to join so its looking good. Current predictions is that we're going to be at position 9500 within 30 days so keep up the good work!

real_ate

Hi again everyone! I'd just like to thank all of you that have contributed to the TCD team ( 116767 ) because we have just today crossed an important milestone!

We are ( at the time of writing ) currently in position 9,994 in the league table! And our current prediction is that in 30 days we will be on position 7,300 which is getting very close to our target of 6,000.

Thank you all for contributing and also welcome to our new members!

EGaffney

A toast!

I'll plug in the toaster.

real_ate

Wow! things just seem to be getting better and better! I've been following the stats closely and we've just passed the 9000 mark!

Not only is the team doing very well but we have a lot of competition forming inside the team too! our 2 new members thedoktor and Coffee Ninja are cleaning up! They both are overtaking everyone in the team at an alarming rate! And within 24 hours will have overtaken all of our other active members: gaffneep, dmcg90 and Eddhorse.

Now remember folks, if you don't want to trail behind you can setup more than one computer with your name and team number and it will add to your current point flow! And also don't forget to get your friends joining, we haven't had a new team member in over a week now.

Well done everyone for adding to the strength of the team. Happy Folding!

PS. And as of the last update we have been predicted to be crossing the 6,000 mark within 30 days! Go Team!

C.D.

real_ate wrote: »

Wow! things just seem to be getting better and better! I've been following the stats closely and we've just passed the 9000 mark!

Not only is the team doing very well but we have a lot of competition forming inside the team too! our 2 new members thedoktor and Coffee Ninja are cleaning up! They both are overtaking everyone in the team at an alarming rate! And within 24 hours will have overtaken all of our other active members: gaffneep, dmcg90 and Eddhorse.

Now remember folks, if you don't want to trail behind you can setup more than one computer with your name and team number and it will add to your current point flow! And also don't forget to get your friends joining, we haven't had a new team member in over a week now.

Well done everyone for adding to the strength of the team. Happy Folding!

PS. And as of the last update we have been predicted to be crossing the 6,000 mark within 30 days! Go Team!

12 days later and we have passed the 8,000 mark. Currently 7,925.. Think we need to get more people on board though as half the team is inactive.

real_ate

C.D. wrote: »

12 days later and we have passed the 8,000 mark. Currently 7,925.. Think we need to get more people on board though as half the team is inactive.

Well this is not unusual... Its quite normal to see a lot of people who have joined the team, submitted one work unit and then give up on the whole thing. But I do agree with your sentiment , we should get a lot more people involved.

One thing that might be good is if someone could go into LG12 in Trinity and put up a few posters, or even just around college on the notice boards. I'm currently living in the UK so I can't make it back in to put up any posters but that should get a lot of people on the team very quickly! Anyone any good at designing posters?

The_Conductor

Guys- if you're serious about this- what you really need to do is install a GPU client as well as (or instead of) a CPU client.

I've a totally crap computer at home- its almost 5 years old- but I invested in a graphics card- specifically so I could go GPU folding- and already have over 100,000 points built up here

There are normally far more processor cores on your graphics card than there are on your CPU- which is why a PS3 gets such a volume of work units done.........

Would there be merit in a Team Ireland- Boards/TCD/UCD/DCU/NUIM combined together to try and get somewhere?

Its all well and good getting into the top 6000- but its a lot easier to overtake the slower teams- than it is the more competitive teams in the higher rankings.

S.

real_ate

smccarrick wrote: »

Would there be merit in a Team Ireland- Boards/TCD/UCD/DCU/NUIM combined together to try and get somewhere?

I personally think that this sort of thing would be an impossible feat, having an "Irish" team would make people feel like their points aren't counting to much. There has been talk about having a sub-team system which I think would work very well in this case, allowing the Ireland team to be a federation of TCD/UCD/DCU etc. and allow people to participate in their own team just as before.

I agree with what you are saying about the GPU stuff but currently there is only a Beta version and its only out for windows. I'm a linux guy myself so that means i'm out and by all means I would like to see some GPU folders on the TCD team but I wouldn't go around pushing for it considering its still beta.

And with regards to competing with other people below the 6000 mark that shouldn't be a problem for TCD if we can get the word out there, when enough people get involved and then get their friends etc to get involved then this whole thing will snowball. At least thats what i'm hoping for

Breizhoneg

Is this thing still alive, was it a good thing to add team member 116767 ?

The_Conductor

Breizhoneg wrote: »

Is this thing still alive, was it a good thing to add team member 116767 ?

I gave up a few years ago. I have my now decomissioned PC- with its 1.2kw PSU etc- sitting in dust sheeting in the attic- a project to show my 4 year old when he is a little older.

For me- while I was competitive- it was more about the hardware- and modding and overclocking- to see what I could get out of my limited resources.

I went down the full Thermaltake (aka the 4 foot tall model with interesting cooling features) route. I also tried to use GPU power more so than CPU power (to be honest- the CPU on this laptop is generations newer, faster, more efficient, cooler etc- than my PC ever was).

I don't know if the TCD team is still in existence- anyone I know who are actively folding, has bowed out........

Breizhoneg

It is a bit like bitcoin mining.

Found team 39432 called boards.ie, looks like there is one who is really active there, so I will swap teams.

Not really doing it for the points, just as they say in Tesco advert, every little helps