F@H soon to release beta folding on GPU's

[Bernie64]

well, more suited to the B3D forum is the fact that F@H hopes to release a new client that folds on GPU's, though most likely only the newest ones.
while the Stanford graphics lab works with ATI & NVidia, the NVidia guy seems to be working more closely with F@H
so if u need an excuse to look into buying that new card, and maybe the PCI-X MB to go with it, this may be the self logic necessary.
will update when actually released. Vijay said 1-2 months in September
http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=2135&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=crazy&start=90

:shock:

[XJnine]

Awesome! I didn't think they'd actually take the time to code this. It'll be interesting to see how GPU's perform clock for clock against CPU's in folding. :?:

[Reyawn]

wooow that's cool!

Reminds me of that audio processing program someone posted about here awhile back! 8)

[MissinLynx]

yeh it'll b interesting. I was running 3dmakr 05 last night and was kinda wondering along the same lines. CPU's r faster than GPU's yet when they render graphics like the 3dmark tests they rn't worth ****. GUess ones designed for 1 thing and the others designed for something totally diff :?

[swaaye]

CPUs aren't even remotely in the same league as a GPU for grinding power, at least for calculations related to graphics processing.

Try the UT2004 software renderer compared to a 4 yr old Radeon 7200 or Geforce 2 for reference. Let alone the more modern cards.

[Bernie64]

major hurdle is GPU's don't have logic like CPU's do.
a CPU is actually a composite of many functions.
to get this to work they will likely have the CPU be like a Sargeant Major and the GPU like a private.
thus an HT CPU would be best suited.
add the fact that duplex CPU-GPU is also necessary, and PCI-X16 kinda stands out (4.1GB/s duplex)
this right now means Intel chipsets.
not a surety, just most likely.
from what I gather Ian Buck is NVidia sponsored, Mark is ATI (Stanford Graphics post doctroral guys)
so SLI may not just have been developed for drawing nice pictures, but actually doing some serious work on.
the alternative CPU cards are touted at $1,000 each.
(CPU on an expansion card just like a video card)

just waiting

[Scott]

This would be cool.

[SwedBear]

Answering to a 2 year old topic .... :)? You know you are not allowed to participate in the contest ;)!. FWIW - seems the new version is still missing and not comping until end of year.

/B

[Scott]

HUH, you mean I can't win the card?

[vfrex]

Is this really beneficial? CPU's seem like they can be more efficiently cooled.

[Kougar]

Guess that explains all of the names I didn't recognize!

SwedBear, I assume you got your info from here? http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-highperformance.html (http://folding.stanford.edu/FAQ-highperformance.html)

April 2006 We and our collaborators have submitted our first folding on GPU papers to the Supercomputing 2006 meeting. The results will be publically available at a later date. We are now working to refine the algorithms as well as make the code suitable for running on FAH. One of the big challenges for FAH deployment will be the differences in drivers on donors machines. However, we now have a plan for this and so we are starting to make plans for porting to FAH. We note that the port may take a while to debug (and we will want to do a great deal of internal testing before releasing such a different type of port).

May 2006 We have started building a GPU cluster to test the GPU port of FAH/Gromacs and to get some initial results to make sure that everything is working well. Before putting this into FAH, we need to make sure that both the science is validated (we get the right answers, only quicker!) and that the GPUs are up to being run 24x7 on FAH. I'm most concerned about the latter point and so this "burn in" test will be important. Assuming all goes well, we'll start the porting to FAH, with the hope (but not an official release date) to release this by the end of the 2006 calendar year.

I'm very eager for them to successfully achieve this, although I was expecting that it wouldn't come about until ATI's or nVidia's physics processing was better developed, so they could somehow tie into this for the calculations...

Vfrex, this is extremely worthwhile, which is why it is being worked on as it is! Not only can you concurrently use the GPU to fold alongside the CPU, but it will definitely be faster.

Graphics cards are designed for massive parallel processing, and although I can't really explain it as well as I've read it (someplace!), this is exactly what is needed for folding@home work. A modern x1900XT or 7900GTX card would be way beyond only 5x faster than today's fastest CPUs at doing folding work. I can't be sure as the article I read was awhile back and I've forgotten it, so I can't give bigger numbers... but you can safely say your CPU won't compare to the GPU's processing ability. ;) Did turn up this though, better explanation than mine: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1029536100&postcount=15 (http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1029536100&postcount=15)

[vfrex]

Interesting idea. I'll try to find the post that suggested that CPU has some advantages in folding.

[mousiness]

HUH, you mean I can't win the card?

dude your son even has a better pc than i do and your pc isnt even on the same universe as mine lol, you get these cards for free what would you use this for just out of curiosity, or are you just being sarcastic?

[Kougar]

dude your son even has a better pc than i do and your pc isnt even on the same universe as mine lol, you get these cards for free what would you use this for just out of curiosity, or are you just being sarcastic?

To steal from his post count... He's being sarcastic ;)

Now, is this where I point out your system is technically better than mine? :mrgreen:

[GIBSON]

This does seem like a very good idea, GPU's have a huge amount of raw computational power, so using them together with your cpu to do the calculations should show some serious improvement.

[Bio-Hazard]

Just put on a little water cooling........;) My 7900GT runs cooler than my GPU under full load.
Throw in a second video card just for folding, that would help out a lot I think.

[GIBSON]

Just put on a little water cooling........;) My 7900GT runs cooler than my GPU under full load.
Throw in a second video card just for folding, that would help out a lot I think.
Your CPU (I think you meant CPU and nog GPU) must be running very hot then, as far as I know GPU's don't get much cooler than +-60°C or did I get this wrong?

[Bio-Hazard]

With my water cooling, my 7900GT GPU idles at 30-31c and it gets to maybe 35c with a OC of 550/1600 on a hot day benchmarking and my CPU may get to 38c at max OC of 305x9. So GPU Folding would run cooler on my system.