59 replies to this topic

[maestro949]

Look at the huge jump in folding horsepower. That's after only two days...

Edited by maestro949, 24 March 2007 - 01:51 PM.

[Live Forever]

http://www.imminst.o...1&hl=folding&s=
(For anyone interested)


I think it is a great thing including PS3s in the available pool of how to do good!

[basho]

Look at the huge jump in folding horsepower.  That's after only two days...

That's quite amazing! And that's only ~19,000 (as of today) people out of a current pool of about 2 million. There's an incredible amount of potential to boost those figures. Lets hope the game forums get the word out and the team competition hots up. If PS3 sales approach anywhere near the PS2 sales numbers (115 million) then it could become the most powerful super computing grid in the world.

From today's Wikipedia Folding@Home entry, you can see the enormous PS3 contribution:




That can only increase as more people buy PS3's. Also interesting is the potential contribution of the GPU client for PC graphics cards:

[maestro949]

Now if we can take the next step and build a game where people are actively but indirectly contributing human brainpower to the biological research you then have an emergent concept and mechanism that can not only defeat aging but can solve any and all biological challenges. You have the most powerful supercomputer that can be built.

Such a network of linked obsessed visual cortexes working in conjunction with imagination and problem solving skills could solve the most complex of biological problems in months or years where it will take an individual genius decades to work out the mathematical and chemical models. Foster competition, teamwork and build a reward system and then we effectively have our genetic algoritms which will lead to the necessary evolutionary components as well.

This is how the singularity will begin.

[modelcadet]

Now if we can take the next step and build a game where people are actively but indirectly contributing human brainpower to the biological research you then have an emergent concept and mechanism that can not only defeat aging but can solve any and all biological challenges.  You have the most powerful supercomputer that can be built. 

Wow... this is an awesome idea. I don't know if this is your idea, but if it is, you should work something up and patent/open-source it. The main problem I see right now is networking. Until the renaissance of interface technology (and it's already happening: Jeff Han from TED2007), we're stuck with the calcium-encrusted capillaries we currently use.

Such a network of linked obsessed visual cortexes working in conjunction with imagination and problem solving skills could solve the most complex of biological problems in months or years where it will take an individual genius decades to work out the mathematical and chemical models.  Foster competition, teamwork and build a reward system and then we effectively have our genetic algoritms which will lead to the necessary evolutionary components as well. 

As for immediate implementation, there should be no reason why psychologists, neurologists, nor AI engineers should not already have access to large scale manipulations of variables on in-game performance (including teamwork, memory, reaction speed) as has already been done in Duke Nukem for research into depression. What other ways could human desires (especially in entertainment) be contributing to distributed cognitive advancements?
I wonder when other gaming platforms, like the 360 or the Wii, will get plugged into the grid...

This is how the singularity will begin.

The product of human capital has been growing at a higher acceleration rate to the average product of "human" capital. I personally believe this assumption is flawed, that our machines are an extension of ourselves.

Speaking of games: I'm a huge fan of Warhammer 40,000 (My name's Paul, and I'm a dork). A lot of the lore revolves around the "gods of Chaos," beings of another dimension empowered by the psyche of beings in this dimension. I think it's a really creative way of embodying artificial intelligence.

[maestro949]

Wow... this is an awesome idea.  I don't know if this is your idea, but if it is, you should work something up and patent/open-source it.  The main problem I see right now is networking.  Until the renaissance of interface technology (and it's already happening: Jeff Han from TED2007), we're stuck with the calcium-encrusted capillaries we currently use. 

I haven't researched whether others have proposed this. I have mentioned it elsewhere on this forum in the past though. I don't seek to profit from this concept other than benefitting from the results. I throw in into the public domain hoping that someone with the resources and creativity can build upon it or better yet, take it and run with it. I have some roadmap ideas on how it could unfold and some "game" ideas bouncing around in my head but they are not thoroughly flushed out. The one that feels the most right is a game I call Phage Wars where people pick either team Virus or team Bacteria and nano-engineer newer versions to counter the opposing attackers. The results are anti-viral agents and concepts designed by humans rather than via evolution.

As for immediate implementation, there should be no reason why psychologists, neurologists, nor AI engineers should not already have access to large scale manipulations of variables on in-game performance (including teamwork, memory, reaction speed) as has already been done in Duke Nukem for research into depression.

Well said. It all boils down to economics. Leveraging existing tech and combining it with both the strengths and weaknesses of human nature is one of the most important emergent concepts that can advance humankind. It was this kind of thinking by Adam Smith that has lead to the exponential accelearation of wealth via free markets and selfish pursuits.

  What other ways could human desires (especially in entertainment) be contributing to distributed cognitive advancements?

I can imagine some nifty AI-human interaction but they are still in the realm of fantasy IMO and not worth mentioning here. Otherwise I can't think of much that can top this from a feasibility perspective assuming the timeframe is a few decades.

This is how the singularity will begin.

The product of human capital has been growing at a higher acceleration rate to the average product of "human" capital.  I personally believe this assumption is flawed, that our machines are an extension of ourselves. 

Not necessarily on an individual basis (at least yet) but collectively as a species, it certainly has merit.

[Matt]

Awesome!

Will be very interesting to see just how much power will be contributed in the next several months.

[Matt]

615Tflops now! LOL

[Live Forever]

If it were viewed as a single supercomputer, it would be first in the world.

Edited by Live Forever, 25 March 2007 - 08:10 AM.

[Ghostrider]

Holy cow. Look at how fast those PS3s fold. Very impressive...I will be sticking with Rosetta for the time being, looks like my computing power will be more appreciated there...however, I really do respect Stanford's clever accomplishments.

[RighteousReason]

wow these numbers keep going up..

936 TFLOPS now

[Aegist]

Holy ..... .....

Wow. Yay for mass computer power...
*blown away*

[Live Forever]

wow these numbers keep going up..

936 TFLOPS now

If it keeps going like this, it should pass the Petaflop barrier soon.

[Live Forever]

Up to 952 now. Must be a lot of PS3s coming on line since the number went up by 16 TFlops over just the last couple of hours or so.

It is amazing how many fewer PS3s there are (about 28,000 compared to about 160,000 Windows machines) but they produce almost 5 times more Tflops than the Windows machines.

[dnamechanic]

A contributor, bwille24, Folding for The Longevity Meme team, is using a PlayStation3 (PS3).

After only a couple of days, looking good:

http://vspx27.stanfo...e&teamnum=32461

[RighteousReason]

990!

I think we should see 1 PFLOP today woo [lol]

[RighteousReason]

wow a bunch of PS3's disappeared... down to 832 TFLOPS now.

[Live Forever]

Digg Article:
"Leave your PS3 on for a good cause Sunday Night"
http://www.digg.com/...night_Digg_this
(it is one of the top dugg articles of the past 24 hours)

[Live Forever]

According to the news page:

3/25/2007 Working towards a petaflop
With the addition of more PS3 clients, we're working our way up towards a petaflop. The performance of the project depends on machines being left on running Folding@Home. There was a performance drop as certain machines started taking longer to do work units (most likely since these machines may not be running Folding@Home 24/7, naturally). This drop is expected as we move from the launch date (when people are running FAH in extended periods) and into a more steady-state set of numbers for the PS3 performance. We are also looking into different ways to evaluate FLOPS, as there are different pros and cons of our current method. As reaching a petaflop is an important milestone, we want to make sure that we use methods which allow our flop count to be directly comparable to others cited.

Apparently, that is why the numbers fell so dramatically.

I still have confidence they will work their way up and surpass a petaflop at some point in the near future.

[Ghostrider]

Yeah, basically what happens is that a bunch of people who happened to own a PS3 saw the digg article, though, huh, I think I will try that...three days later, well, they tried it.

[maestro949]

The drop is due to the fact that FOH network has arbitrarily halved the TFLOPs score for the PS3 according to this blog.

[Live Forever]

The drop is due to the fact that FOH network has arbitrarily halved the TFLOPs score for the PS3 according to this blog.

I like how they say "Spartanesque PS3s". lol

[Live Forever]

I wonder if they are working on clients for the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii?

[Live Forever]

According to the updated news on the TFLOPs variation.

3/26/2007 Update on flops count
We have been looking into the flops count and its large variations and have found one more issue. The initial stats were based off the average we had seen during testing (yielding approximately 25 GFLOPs for a single PS3). However, the pre-launch testing period used big proteins which will result in higher GFLOP utilization. When we went live, we started our initial post-launch phase with small proteins to test the scientific validity; these smaller proteins have more overhead (since they spend less time calculating the force -- which is highly optimized) and thus the GFLOPS are lower now. As we switch back to the larger proteins, we expect to see an increase in the FLOPS per machine, and thus the overall FLOP count will change dramatically. We stress that there is a wide variation in FLOPS we can get (easily a factor of 3x) and so we expect the number to vary widely until we reach some steady state average.

[dnamechanic]

The Longevity Meme F@H team is about to be passed by a team that just started a few days ago.

The team is called 2ch@PS3. Guess that name says something about the processors they are using. They are currently folding at the rate ~382,000 points per day. They will pass the TLM team by tomorrow night. For comparision, the top folding group of all the project is [H]ardOCP at ~633,000 points per day.

Catch a glimpse of 2ch@PS3 as they head to the top of the contributor list.

Google doesn't provide many clues to 2ch@PS3 origins, except lots of characters that probably indicate an Asian connection.

[Live Forever]

The Longevity Meme F@H team is about to be passed by a team that just started a few days ago.

The team is called 2ch@PS3. Guess that name says something about the processors they are using.  They are currently folding at the rate ~382,000 points per day.  They will pass the TLM team by tomorrow night.  For comparision, the top folding group of all the project is [H]ardOCP at ~633,000 points per day.

Catch a glimpse of 2ch@PS3 as they head to the top of the contributor list.

Google doesn't provide many clues to 2ch@PS3 origins, except lots of characters that probably indicate an Asian connection.

Well, any more folding is a good thing, no matter who it comes from.

I guess this just means we need more gamers on the Longevity Meme team. )

[Ghostrider]

If only we has a single PS9. You know those systems are backwards compatible :-)

[maestro949]

Well, any more folding is a good thing, no matter who it comes from.

+

If only we has a single PS9. You know those systems are backwards compatible :-)

Imagine an economically advanced China and India where say 5% of the population is contributing their future desktops, gaming consoles and toasters to really big and complex problems. e.g. simulations of the networks of networks of biology. Three decades? Anyone care to wager two decades? Going once, going twice...

[maestro949]

i.e. we're just scratching the surface as to what we can do with massive networked computing technology.

[basho]

The Longevity Meme F@H team is about to be passed by a team that just started a few days ago.

The team is called 2ch@PS3.

Take that Longevity Meme!

Go 2ch!!