Support Cancer Research and the NCSU Wolfpack With Your Computer's Spare Time!

What Is It?
Essentially the http://folding.stanford.edu/ uses your unused CPU cycles to model how proteins fold in the human body. The misfolding of proteins is often involved in well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson’s disease. Because this endeavor requires massive amounts of computing power, their project uses spare CPU time on computers that would otherwise sit idle in homes and businesses across the world. Here at North Carolina State University, we have formed this team in order to donate our spare CPU time to help this important endeavor.

The North Carolina State University (http://ncsufolding.com) Folding@Home Team (Team # 59) was one of the first teams to join the Folding@Home project, and was the very first University-based team to join. We are currently ranked in the top 100 in the world and are ramping up production in an effort to make it into the Top 50. We are all dedicated to doing our part to help end some of these terrible diseases, and we would appreciate the company of anyone who would like to help.

All it takes is the installation of a small piece of software and your computer will start completing Work Units for the project and the team. The Folding@Home process runs at the lowest possible priority so you can run it 24X7 without slowing down your computer or interfering with your everyday computing tasks. If you have a Sony PS3 Game Console you can also run Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PS3) on it with great results.

How Can I Help?

Go to http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Download,download and install the software. Our Team Number is 59.

Click here - http://www.ncsufolding.com/?page_id=4 for more detailed installation instructions.

Windows Computers:
We recommend using the "text-only console” client for most windows computers. If you have a dual/quad/etc core processor, be sure to install and run the SMP client to get you and the team far more points than the standard console client (but sometimes it has problems starting as a service, so you might have to restart the client manually or automatically via startup folder when your computer restarts). In general, its best to stay away from the graphical clients. If you have a Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading, its best to turn off Hyperthreading in the BIOS if you know how. Feel free to post in this thread with any questions.

Mac and Linux Computers:
There are both "text-only" consoles and SMP clients for Linux and Macintosh computers too! If you have a dual/quad/etc core processor be sure to run the SMP client as you'll get far more points than the text-only client. But the text-only clients also help out too if you only have single-core processors.

PS3:
PS3s currently provide over 60% of the processing power in the Folding@home network and are capable of producing many points for the team. If you have PS3 system version 1.6 or later, you will see a Folding@Home icon in the Network column of the XMB (PS3 Networking menu). Just click on the icon and that's it. If you don't have 1.6 or later, perform a system upgrade. Make sure to use Team #59!

The more computers and PS3s you run the clients on, the more points your username and the NCSU team earns! Install as many clients as you can and watch your username/team progress at the stats page - http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=59

Links

Team Links:
NCSU F@H Team Website: http://www.ncsufolding.com
NCSU F@H Team Discussion: http://brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=118820
NCSU F@H Team Facebook Group: http://ncst.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5012521644

F@H Links:
F@H Project Homepage: http://folding.stanford.edu/
F@H Official Forums: http://forum.folding-community.org
F@H Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home
F@H Wiki Site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

Stats:
Stats1: http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=59
Stats2: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Stats
Monitor your production: http://fahmon.net
Compare your production with other users: http://fahinfo.org

2/2/2008 6:47:37 PM

everyone done updating your smp clients yet? if you haven't noticed yet, they no longer work

http://www.stanford.edu/%7Ekasson/folding/Folding@Home%20Windows%20SMP%20Client.EXE

2/2/2008 6:49:18 PM

mine's 86% done crunching a unit. I guess it will expire once that one finishes. I'll upgrade when it's done

2/2/2008 6:58:33 PM

any brainiacs online right now? if so reply here, send a pm, or send me an im at drmarshmellow69

2/3/2008 10:58:36 PM

to summarize first it said something about already being installed....then it said some port 8676 error thing...shes gonna let me put it under my name so i can get more points....1.5ghz dual core 2gb ram

she is the administrator

btw my computer gets 651.24ppd...t2310 processor 1gb ram

[Edited on February 4, 2008 at 3:49 AM. Reason : .]

2/4/2008 3:41:24 AM

Is there any reason why my PS3 says it's completed 6 WU's and I know both of my computers have completed at least 1 WU, but the stats page only listed 4 WU's being complete?

Just wondering, not that it really matters, but I would like to keep track of what I complete per day/week/etc.

Thanks

2/5/2008 11:49:59 AM

^It looks like all three machines have sent in WUs.
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&teamnum=59&username=DiscProdiG
The stats may not be up to date by a few hours, or it is possible that a WU could not be uploaded if the recieving server is down. I noticed my PS3 had to make a few repeated attempts to upload a WU recently.

2/5/2008 12:24:23 PM

So I installed the SMP core on my Core2Duo machine here, but it's showing 4 cores running, is this correct? Is there some way with the SMP client to limit it to 2 cores at time to match the 2 physical cores on the processor?

2/5/2008 4:53:51 PM

Welcome Tyler!

Its supposed to do 4 processes...I think the SMP client was originally built for quad core procs, but it runs nicely on dual core boxes too. You can't limit the number of processes, but they run at the lowest priority so if you/your system need the cycles for something else then the SMP client gives them up. I run the SMP client (as a service) 24X7 on home and work machines and haven't had the need to turn the client off.

2/5/2008 4:56:52 PM

I was just wondering in terms of efficiency, it seems that 4 cores on a dual core machine is probably not very efficient

2/5/2008 6:27:24 PM

hence why it gets less points than a quad core processor

2/5/2008 10:47:12 PM

meant to also say
welcome back Noen

2/6/2008 1:57:14 AM

i'm getting use to knowing how to calculate when i will pass people etc...wish i coulda got it on my roomates laptop...wish i could burrow it and bring it to campus or something

Quote :

"89 62,298 drunknloaded +7 531 0 0 1,760 27,931 89 90 63,120 FemmeDangereuse -2 0 0 0 0 27,383 188 91 63,167 FykalJpn +1 +3 343 0 0 1,109 27,351 91 92 63,485 tqhosting.com -1 -3 0 0 0 0 27,151 90 93 63,764 trox_355 -3 0 0 0 0 26,971 160 94 64,875 Todd -2 144 0 0 478 26,308"

pretty tight no homo...i'm barely in front...next one after this is like 29k

[Edited on February 6, 2008 at 2:05 AM. Reason : .]

2/6/2008 2:03:46 AM

I will say that getting to the top is hard, but staying there is even harder.

2/6/2008 9:34:25 AM

I have a pretty flat trendline, which I guess is good showing that all my computers are being worked to their fullest



Which reminds me, how many points should a Core 2 E4300 produce per day? I'm running the SMP client, and I believe it's overclocked to 2.7 GHz (I'll have to ask my friend who built it). The ~1200 points is a combination of the commandline client on this Core 2, and two 2.5 GHz P4s (one mine, and the other my mom's out in Cali)

2/6/2008 9:56:47 AM

I'm not sure how many of you have PS3's, but I've read on the news page they are having major problems with PS3's getting and sending back WU's. I know I've lost 5 WU in the past two days, so I'm giving my PS3 a break until they fix this situation.

2/6/2008 10:05:48 AM

I don't really care about where I am in the total production list

I just try to do well in the top 20 producers list (which i guess helps with the first thing)

2/6/2008 12:27:55 PM

we broke our record high this month:
1.6 million points
4,000 WU's
400 members
20 million points total

we are also about to break our all-time high of #85 team!

congrats to all our contributors!

[Edited on February 6, 2008 at 3:45 PM. Reason : .]

2/6/2008 3:41:07 PM

welp, replaced a single-core AMD Athlon64 3000+ with a X2 4400+ this week. We'll see how that runs.

2/6/2008 9:47:23 PM

my work computer is being replaced tomorrow

E6600 will now be a dual Xeon machine w/ 12GB of memory (and dual 24" LCD's to boot)

[Edited on February 6, 2008 at 11:48 PM. Reason : ,]

2/6/2008 11:48:20 PM

holy crap

what the hell kind of work do you do that you need a rig like that? your "work machine" is a production sql server or something?

2/7/2008 12:03:09 AM

i'm an architect, 3D visualization and BIM (building information modeling)

[Edited on February 7, 2008 at 12:14 AM. Reason : bim]

2/7/2008 12:14:31 AM

all right. just got a PS3 yesterday and joined the NCSU team two minutes ago. My name on there is RawWulf.

Now how does this work? I set the shut off to be after the current session ... do I just leave my PS3 alone and it'll shut down in a couple hours? Will my PS3 overheat? The fuck is going on while this planet floats around on my screen?

2/7/2008 1:11:37 PM

well the idea is you leave the PS3 up 24X7. and enable it to do Folding@Home whenever you're not using it for gaming/dvds. i've never head anything about the units overheating...i'd imagine they have a pretty nice cooling system in place. i'm sure some of the other team members who fold their PS3s 24X7 might have more input than me tho

2/7/2008 1:23:06 PM

2/7/2008 1:24:01 PM

how about bandwidth?

If TWC decides to start charging people for bandwidth in the next couple years, how much usage am I looking at with this thing?

2/7/2008 1:27:03 PM

^Very low amounts, especially when compared to watching YouTube or downloading torrents or newsgroups (the legal type, of course).

2/7/2008 1:30:45 PM

yeah FAH barely uses any bandwidth at all...just a little bit when downloading a new workunit, or sending the results. either way you won't notice its there, even if running heavy downloading at the same time its receiving/sending work units (which isn't that often)

2/7/2008 2:08:09 PM

my first 7,000 point day

[Edited on February 9, 2008 at 2:16 AM. Reason : point]

2/9/2008 2:08:08 AM

I'm debating flying out to visit...

...to steal your computers

2/9/2008 2:44:26 AM

^^ sweet

2/9/2008 7:09:38 PM

I'm kicking ass since I started! Of course I've been out of town the past couple of days, so my PS3 has done nothing but fold for almost 48 hours.

2/9/2008 7:40:32 PM

i have a dual quad core xeon box with 32 GB of ram at my disposal

how many points per day would that net?

2/9/2008 10:34:05 PM

no idea, but a guess would be a minimum of 4k/day

2/9/2008 11:08:37 PM

wouldn't you want to run two instances of the smp client on that kind of machine?

2/10/2008 11:00:01 AM

sure

2/10/2008 11:18:28 AM

nice job the last 4 days Prospero, can u keep it up?

2/11/2008 12:05:29 AM

I just installed the new SMp client and it's on track for about 6% per hour, which is a good 2-3x faster than what it was doing before

2/11/2008 12:43:42 AM

Quote :

"nice job the last 4 days Prospero, can u keep it up? "

unfortunately no, i'm borrowing a co-worker's dual xeon 5160 workstation at work while he's on vacation, i'll try to keep it up until Weds. in which i'll go back down to ~3500 ppd or so, i'm trying my best to stay in the top 5 (er, getting back into the top 5 and staying there)

[Edited on February 11, 2008 at 12:49 AM. Reason : .]

2/11/2008 12:46:43 AM

i don't have all of these at my disposal, but here are my historical stat's for these processors:

Xeon 5160 @ 3.0Ghz - 9:50 frame - 2577 ppd
C2D E8400 @ 3.0Ghz - 13:50 frame - 1832 ppd
C2D E6850 @ 3.0Ghz - 16:06 frame - 1574 ppd
C2D E6600 @ 2.4Ghz - 19:30 frame - 1299 ppd
C2D T2310 @ 1.46Ghz - 36:08 frame - 701 ppd

2/11/2008 3:55:33 PM

I keep getting this error -- what's going on?

Quote :

"[23:31:03] - Ask before connecting: No [23:31:03] - User name: joe17669 (Team 59) [23:31:03] - User ID: 1CC2B8767553C464 [23:31:03] - Machine ID: 1 [23:31:03] [23:31:03] Loaded queue successfully. [23:31:03] - Preparing to get new work unit... [23:31:03] + Attempting to get work packet [23:31:03] - Connecting to assignment server [23:31:03] + Attempting to send results [23:31:05] - Successful: assigned to (0.0.0.0). [23:31:05] + News From Folding@Home: Welcome to Folding@Home [23:31:05] Work Unit has an invalid address. [23:31:05] - Error: Attempt #1 to get work failed, and no other work to do. Waiting before retry. [23:31:06] - Couldn't send HTTP request to server [23:31:06] + Could not connect to Work Server (results) [23:31:06] (171.64.65.64:8080) [23:31:06] - Error: Could not transmit unit 00 (completed February 11) to work s erver. [23:31:06] + Attempting to send results [23:31:15] + Attempting to get work packet [23:31:15] - Connecting to assignment server [23:31:16] - Couldn't send HTTP request to server [23:31:16] + Could not connect to Work Server (results) [23:31:16] (171.64.122.76:8080) [23:31:16] Could not transmit unit 00 to Collection server; keeping in queue. [23:31:16] + Attempting to send results"

2/11/2008 6:33:55 PM

looks like your firewalled

Quote :

"[23:31:05] - Successful: assigned to (0.0.0.0)."

2/11/2008 7:31:46 PM

^^ I had a laptop doing that yesterday, and I read a few places that 0.0.0.0 can mean server problems at Stanford...it should start working at some point. How long have you been seeing that message?

2/12/2008 8:42:31 AM

The WU was eventually submitted, but it gave me that error for a solid 12 hours or so.

2/12/2008 9:57:17 AM

wow

2/12/2008 10:46:06 AM

yeah i'm thinking there were probably some server problems, glad it finally submitted

2/12/2008 11:34:16 AM

I've been meaning to join this effort for years.

I just finally got around to it.

I never use my T60p, so it's going to be running F@H 24/7

[Edited on February 12, 2008 at 12:12 PM. Reason : asdf]

2/12/2008 12:09:55 PM

the HTPC will be put together sometime this weekend (just a dual-core machine, though)...that'll be 2 more cores to add to my other 5

2/12/2008 12:32:19 PM

^^ Welcome Bobby! Great to have you on board. Feel free to install as many clients as you can

^ SMP?

2/12/2008 1:07:06 PM

^ but of course

i've yet to go the quad-core route, but i have my E4500 on SMP, and the E2180 will be on SMP when i get it up

my old 2.2ghz P4 laptop (missing a screen) runs the client and my personal 1.83ghz laptop runs it when it's on

although, my new T9300 laptop should be here this week or next, so that could be promising...that'd knock me up to 8 cores

[Edited on February 12, 2008 at 1:19 PM. Reason : 8]

2/12/2008 1:19:44 PM