PC Folding Farm or PS3 Folding Farm

KE1HA

KE1HA

KE1HA

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3 Jul 2004
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Helena, Montana
Ok .. been reading all this business about the PS3's and the ATI GPU F@H power.

Stanford & Sony are boasting 100 Gflops per PS3. That is SERIOUS !!! power compared to the average 2 to 5 Gflops per average cluster node / workstation rig.

If stanford are "Correct" and "Accurate" .. one PS3 would be somewhere in realm of 20 to 50 times more powerfull than a high performance workstation / cluster node.

At a US cost ~ 450 dollars per PS3 .. that makes the PS3 a SERIOUS contendor for farm nodes, at least I think so.

Imagin Having your own Tflop cluster at home !!! I can remember back when Lawerence Livermore, IBM etc etc etc and all the other big guns were despritely trying to top 1000 Gflops, then came the puch for Tflops, now Pflops.

Check out - Top500.org

The number 500 supercomputer cluster is running an Rmax = 2036 Gflops. 2036/100 = 21 PS3's or a cost of 8000-9000 dollars !! Wonder how much they paid for their system.

In light of all the developments on PS3's < The IBM / Sony / Toshiba Cell Chip > and GPU cores, one has to seriously consider shifting to PS3's and GPU's v.s. making a capitol investment in Computer nodes.

What Do You All Think ???
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KE1HA said:
What Do You All Think ???
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I wouldn't spend a single penny until these clients are tested publically and you know they are not going to get dropped.

If the hype is true then they would certainly be a great purchase - however there is always the possibility that the PS3 will not be able to handle 100% 24/7 crunching and may be seriously limited :o

Lets hope you can use the full crunchy potential and it won't actually melt after a few hours of continous use - if so it will revolutionise the DC world! :cool:
 
While the price may be atractive, especially in a year or so when it will inevitably drop by £50 - £100, it remains to be seen if these systems will remain stable at 100% processing power 24/7.

If Sony have created a system that remains cool under full load for extended periods of time, PS3 farms could start becoming a common next year! :)

edit: bah you beat me to it Rich!
 
Not until its been tested and confirmed and then you have to make your own decision.

I would get PCs cos I can use it for other purposes as well as to scavenge spare parts from....

I am not into gaming either, so the PS3 is out.
 
Id definately look at getting a few PS3 rigs if the stated figures are anything like accurate, as for 24/7 stability, I dont think that would be an issue, im sure you guys will be easily able to mod the unit with a much better HSF without too much trouble.

As others have said though, I wont be buying until the client is freely available and proven.
 
an enclosure with a small AC unit would probably do away with any need to void the warranty by opening the things up

I would definately buy a PS3 even if it's only 10x the power of a Folding PC setup - great value for money as long as it all works as expected
 
Didnt think about lowering the ambient, ive got an AC unit in my PC room, it can get the ambient down to 10c during the summer, i havent had it turned on for a while, since reducing my DC setup i havent needed it.
 
I don t know if its a good comparison or not but i had my PS2 playing Gran turismo non stop and racing for around 48 hours doing a couple endurance races and that was back in Australian summer in a room with no fan or Air con and it heats up so much i cant go in there and it handled it extremely well and didnt have a single problem.

If the PS3 Can do that then i would say it should be good to fold :cool:
 
Zip said:
I don t know if its a good comparison or not but i had my PS2
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It's not a good comparison. The PS2 is based on normal technology, the cell processor for the PS3 is a completely new type of processor and AFAIK they haven't released how heat efficient it is.
 
Rich hit the nail on the head. We need to see some numbers before we can properly determine if a $499 PS3 or a $499 $x86_flavor_of_the_month rig will offer superior performance. If IBM's concept of prioritizing bandwidth over latency is as beneficial to FP intense tasks like MD, then I think I know which will offer the best performance.

The Pande boys might also want to take advantage of the PS3's graphical capabilities with a GPU client. :)
 
As mentioned really, need to wait and see a bit.

We need to know if it lets you fold for a specific team first, it will be a lot less exciting if it doesn't, and we will need to wait till the early batches with problems have been and gone, otherwise they might all overheat or have faulty psus like the X360 or something, very likely considering the tight budget sony are working to.

Still, if its as powerful as you suggest then i'll certainly get a couple. The nice thing is, its not your problem what goes on inside, if it dies due to excessive heat or something just take it back.

However there is a problem. I would think that if sony realise these will be bought by the thousand for use as folding nodes they will want to do something to prevent that, as they are making a huge loss on every console and having people use it solely for folding does not allow them to sell you games to make money (or at least not for all your consoles if you bought several) and also means other compensations for the loss they are making such as their desire to get blu ray into every living room are thwarted.

Sony don't want to sell you a ps3, they want to sell you a ps3 and 20 games and a bunch of accesories and services to make some money. They certainly don't want you doing none of those things and then wasting the precious blu-ray drive, and i expect a disproportionate number of ps3s used solely for folding will fail prematurely and require repair incurring yet more costs for sony. They won't like that at all, and either will do something to prevent it or disable folding. Thats assuming a large enough number of people get some for folding nodes and they notice.
 
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