Sony Removes Folding@home From PlayStation 3
- Thread starter Timothy Chang
- Start date
Yeah, I'd normally be happy to grab a pitchfork and torch, but I'm guessing you've hit the nail on the head. I'd bet that there just wasn't the level of use of this app to justify putting any resources towards updating or even just maintaining it. I used to boot it up before work back when I first bought my PS3, but it's been a least a good year or more since I've accessed the app. A pity it wasn't something you could set to automatically run when your system was idle (or if it was I didn't see the option).GenGenners said:
Oh... you took the wind out of the saild for the HMS ***** about Sony.GenGenners said:
You're no fun...
But why remove anything? - why doesn't Sony let US, you know, it's customers decide if we want to keep the features, even if they'll never be updated. That basic choice is being denied, on a system that we paid for, our property. Do console manufacturer's even understand the concept of ownership!GenGenners said:
If it's not the evil we think it is, then please explain why it's a good thing to remove these features?, are we getting better features instead?.... of course not!
We'll have an long and irritating dashboard update that does nothing but replace features with more profitable ones, and you know it.
The thing that sticks in our craw is that Folding is a good thing, it benefits valuable research, and everyone can help out a little, just by leaving it to run. How can the resulting removal of this feature be considered fair, or a good thing, or something that we aren't entitled to complain about?
Seriously, I'm sick of the 'get over it attitude' that this place has these days, not allowed to complain about Sony removing Folding, or MS removing Facebook etc, not allowed to complain about shitty Kickstarter projects that fail. When did you all turn into a bunch of maliable hippies - have an opinion and share it, otherwise stick the 'get over it' where you might have trouble getting over it. If we don't recognise and object to this stuff, the next generation of consoles will carry it all forward, all the shite that Sony and Microsoft wish they could pull on us will be fair play by then.
No serious folder will use GPUs to get lots of PPD. Just simply way too inefficient performance per watt. The thing to use are 4 CPU AMD G34 based opteron systems. Max of 64 cores in a single machine and the possibility for well over 1 million (yes, a thousand times more than a PS3) points per day. Next best thing are single i7 systems (for price/perf).Griffolion said:
My rig can put out around 140 000 points per day from the CPU alone (using bigadv clients with corehack and native linux), 5ghz i7 3930K has its advantages. As for my GPU, in the v7 win7 client it'll do around 38 000 ppd at the maximum while drawing around 375W. Much less efficient than a 300W CPU doing well over 100K.
Personally I've got around 15 million points in F@H from the last year or so. Sad to see this go, every little bit helps.
This is what I was thinking the whole time I was reading down through the comments.GenGenners said:
People just love demonising things I guess...
(though the article itself is a little skewed to promote such a sheep mentality)
Or the PS3 is 6 years old. I see Griffolion already explained, but basically the PS3 was impressive when it first came out because it was essentially a multicore CPU/GPU hybrid, at a time when F@H was mostly limited to single core CPU folding on PCs. But now with an improved folding client, multicore CPUs everywhere and GPU folding (although admittedly only on nVidia), the PS3 isn't anywhere near as good.Mistermixmaster said:
Yeah, they talk about this a bit in some of their documentation about how they assign points to different things. CPUs are flexible and GPUs are fast, so there could definitely be a place for something that has advantages of both. The problem is simply that the PS3 is old, and a modern CPU can do better even without those advantages. A new Cell processor could well be a folding force to be reckoned with, but the one in the PS3 just isn't any more.Richard A. Kiernan said:
I see where you're going wrong there. Very few people are serious folders who base their computer purchases on what will get lots of points on an obscure bit of distributed computing. For the vast majority of us who simply feel like donating a bit of time to a good cause, GPU folding can be a very productive part of that without any worry about whether we're getting the best possible points/Watt.Alatar The Red said:
Well Griffolion was talking about serious folders. Or that's at least what I thought when he said this:Kahani said:
So I was just kind of replying to him. I absolutely know that it's a really small majority that will buy systems based on F@H. Even I don't do that, my rig is for benching with dry ice and LN2 mostly. Gaming too. I just like to help with F@H from time to time.
Sure GPUs are a fine way to increase your PPD on a normal machine but they're still much worse at producing points right now. That's most likely going to change actually since pande said that they can now run the same work units on GPUs as they can on CPUs. Should be interesting.
I only used this application once or twice. I never fully understood how it worked, but it sounds like it helped a lot with research at Stanford. Like others, I gotta believe there was a reasoning behind doing this. The article made it sound like a good amount of data was already collected through this. Maybe there is no more need for it?
I am sitting here pushing the massive red overreaction button I have taped to my computer screen, and guess what it's working, the over reaction is happening.
Re read the report
Re read the report
What you have there is Sony are removing a section from the PS3 menu ergo we assume 'everything' under that section is being removed, no where does it confirm that folding@home isn't being moved to a different sub menu or being made available for download for those that want to run it, speaking of which, of those that are de crying this menu juggling (and until we get confirmation otherwise, that's all it is) how many of you have actually spent any time running folding@home on their PS3?
I'm getting a little tired of the consoles always giving us something to lure us in and then taking it away. I used to be a console gamer mainly, but now I'm starting to get irritated. When I install something on my PC it doesn't go away because HP has decided it's no longer worth having.
Good point, for all we know they might be making it a seperate thing.Laughing Man said:
When I first got my PS3 I used to run it all the time, I used it as a screensaver, because the TV I have for it is a fairly dated flatscreen that aquires a ghost image over time if left alone. Maybe if Sony added a screensavers option, and had it as a screensaver then we'd all be happy - that would be the ideal outcome I think, for everyone concerned.
I really REALLY hope this isn't taken away. My 20GB Emotion Engine PS3 quit playing everything except PS2 games (even audio CDs don't work), so when I'm not playing PS2 games it folds 24/7. I've upgraded three times since then, so I have 3 that run almost 24/7 and one that runs sparingly because I don't want it to burn out. The CPU in my PC sucks for this (Athlon X2 BE with third core unlocked,), and I don't want to put my GPU under that kind of constant pressure. I've been running this on at least one system since it was introduced, but I suppose I could sell the two middle systems and have my epic HDMI PS2 and Slim PS3 for games. I'd still rather not have to though.
The gist of these apps is that they start with a protein chain then use the basic laws of motion to give each atom an acceleration and hence a velocity. Even a small protein has a thousand atoms in it, so a thousand atoms to calculate every interaction with each other and potentially some solution they are disolved in to get a force, to get an acceleration, to get a speed, to get a position. All these calculations need to be refreshed every million billionth (1/1,000,000,000,000,000) of a second. Hence, massive computing requirements.kburns10 said:
It's been on PC for ages, it just happened to hop on PS3 with special visuals.bliebblob said:
OT: I think it's pretty stupid to cut the program, at one point I think I was #13 on the list for data given on the PS3, I just left it on all night and whatever.
Considering my grandfather died of Alzhimers and my mom is currently dying to another brain diseease I think it'd be grand if they kept something around to help people not die from that.
I expect it's not used by many people, anymore, and maybe the costs they pay for the weather and global news outweighs the user base.Tanis said: