UD Team MPUK 3 years old!

[Cabe]

http://www.grid.org/services/teams/team.htm?id=43CC466B-6A3C-42CC-AABC-E399FD541CA3

just noticed that mpuk have donated 3 years of spare somputing power to this good cause.

Total CPU Time(y:d:h:m:s) (Rank) 72:291:02:29:47 (# 217)

keep up the stirling work lads.

[WhiteKnight]

3 years of time actual time, but only 275 days of CPU time.

I, however, seem to have put nearly 18 years worth into it :eek:

The joys of multy cpu systems. :D

[MONK]

0:335:21:35:04 just so close to my first year

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

[maxrealism]

a lot of slackers in the mpuk ud team. I think ppl need a reminder cabe... to keep up the good work.

[WhiteKnight]

You`d have thought that with all that processing power at their disposal we`d have cured cancer, aids, starvation poverty and be onto the fun things like warp feild dynamics by now....

[Cabe]

your forgot the cure for CS as well, although I suspect that may only require one processor, to target the minigun...................

[Guigsy]

i've been doing folding@home for a while for the hardOCP team (#1 team) and i just put it on my new laptop. But then i just saw cabe's sig. and i thaught.... **** hardocp and a load of people i dont know. and i jumped ship about 2 mins ago. :D

[Wizzo]

Originally posted by WhiteKnight
3 years of time actual time, but only 275 days of CPU time.

I, however, seem to have put nearly 18 years worth into it :eek:

The joys of multy cpu systems. :D

I don't think the client makes use of SMP. They haven't released an update to the client in like 3 years which is also depressing :(

Clearly I need to make use of spare servers sat down the unit to catch you up WK :)

[Freelance]

could we do an i20 (i21 would be better) flash mob using UD? set up a i20 team, give everyone the details, client on the ftp, and see what we can do. wouldn't do any favours for the heat though.

[WhiteKnight]

Originally posted by Wizzo
I don't think the client makes use of SMP. They haven't released an update to the client in like 3 years which is also depressing :(

Clearly I need to make use of spare servers sat down the unit to catch you up WK :)

No the client isnt SMP aware, but with an SMP box, one CPU can be rapeing away with UD, and the other can be doing everything else, so UD doesnt get affected by other system performance.

[Pingman]

I on't understand what this does, whats the point of it?

[Lucifa]

The client performs various "medical" tests, running simulations of various cell-binding things more complicated than I care to know about.
It processes all this and sends the results back to the server for analysis. I assume you understand the use of distributed computing so we don't have to explain that?

Lucifa

[Wizzo]

It's computational chemistry. A lot of modern drugs operate by binding to naturally occuring sites on proteins and cells called "receptors". These can act to trigger the protein to do something, like activate it if it is an enzyme, turn off a cellular process or even trigger cell death. For example, mast cells product histamine in reaction to certain allergens such as pollen in sensitised individuals. It is the action of histamine on cells nearby that give the symptoms of hayfever. If you use a drug that inhibits the release of histamine, or blocks it from binding to the histamine receptors on cells, then you stop the symptoms of hayfever. There are countless other examples of drugs that operate by blocking or stimlulating receptor sites.

What the UD project is doing is literally trying every possible molecule, rotaing it through 360 degrees in 3 dimensions, and seeing if it could potentially bind anywhere to a protein involved in a disease process. If it does, then it could potentially be a new drug to treat the disease process.

I find this a thoroughly worthwhile cause and one that may well yield real results that would benefit mankind within our lifetime. As such, I feel it is a better expenditure of spare CPU time than say searching for extra terrestrial signals or crunching encryption keys. Finding drugs that may help treat/prevent cancer and other diseases is something we should all be supporting. With the UD programme we can all play a part, no matter how minor.

[Cheez]

It's just a pitty that unlike almost every other distributed computing project out there, UD has a crap client and only supports one OS/Platform.

[Guigsy]

sounds very similar to what folding@home does.

the client is better than the folding@home one plus its a lot nicer to use and more interesting. suprised there is no linux client tho.

[Pingman]

It was the distributed computing bit i needed explaing too :)
from what i have gathered it basically takes somethign that needs doing that will take alot of cpu power and spreads it over a lot of seperate CPUs to accomplish its task?

[Nes]

yes :)

[WhiteKnight]

Ping man, yes, basically.

Distributed computing really works well with tasks that can be broken down into many smaller tasks.

In this case, there are litterally millions of combinations of proteins and cells, so each combination is considered a "job".

You are sent a job.
You (well the pc does) try all possible 3D rotations of the protein to see if it will fit.
If it does, then "w00t" you might have found a cure for somthing, if not, just bin the result, and get a new job.

Just to give you some idea of how powerful the United Devices distributed computer really is. If a sinlge computer of "average" power were to try and do everything that UD has done to date, it would take approx 340,000 years.

[pen]

I really should sort my life out and get involved, i take it there is little to no performace hit?

[WhiteKnight]

I dont know about other Distributed tools, but UD is designed to run in IDLE mode.

This basically means that it will only use CPU cylcles that you dont, so technically there should be no performance hit at all.

However, you will notice a little hit, maybe 2 or 3 fps in games.

Alternativly you could run it as a screensaver, so it only runs when you`ve not used the pc fro 10 minutes or so.

[her0n]

nearly 4 days woo :p:

[Guigsy]

works fine with games on my 2000xp. but it will increce your cpu temps. mines about 4deg more than i would usualy have

also the web page says i have it installed on 5 devices... yet i only have it running on 3 pc's i have had to reinstall it a few times tho. so maybe its that :)

[WhiteKnight]

Yeh, if you dont take a copy of the installed directory to the new machine then it makes a new "device" even if you use the same device name.

Kid of iritating but you can understand why.

[Guigsy]

hum odd

[TheSmith]

Very interesting,

I will sign up to this, So i would be correct in thinking that the rapid increase in proccessor speed must have made them able to proccess what would have been a years work 6 years ago in less than 6 months now?

:confused:

[maxrealism]

Originally posted by TheSmith
Very interesting,

I will sign up to this, So i would be correct in thinking that the rapid increase in proccessor speed must have made them able to proccess what would have been a years work 6 years ago in less than 6 months now?

:confused:

Uhm depends what you call a years work.

If by that you mean all the people processing unit's would take a year... then I don't think so... as not everyone can afford to upgrade, especially where it's run in smaller businesses. Also I don't run it 24-7 at home so theres less time being put in by my home pc, and you've got to take into consideration the people who've given up / give up... so the mpuk crew is held up by a few of the faithful.

[WhiteKnight]

But then add to that the fact that many more people have signed up and you probably negate any losses.

[andyf]

How would you determine which processor would be well suited for a Distributed Project such as Folding or UD ? Would the SPEC benchmarks give a good idea ?

[WhiteKnight]

That is a very good question...

I would presume something that is good a floating point calculations would be better than one without.

Onboard cache makes little diffference, (unless you are talking 1 or 2mb xeons) as the files are around 900k compressed.

Personally i run Intel on all my machines, so i cant give you a relative benchmark against AMD, but you might find some sites about the net that do.

[Cheez]

My Athlon 64 3400+ in windows manages to chew through a Seti unit in about the same time as a 3.2Ghz P4 Xeon (With HT) in linux.