Pssst! The best MacOS X hint ever!

Macaholic G5 · 01-11-2005, 04:15 PM

Here it is; F-O-L-D! Just sit back and let your Mac do all the hard work even when it's not working!

Every second of the day, millions of computers around the world are sitting around doing nothing at all. In fact, it’s been estimated that roughly 99 percent of the average personal computer’s processing power is idled and hence wasted. Why let your Mac or PC idle CPU cycles go to waste when they could be doing something really worthwhile? The next time you leave your keyboard and screen - or even pause to read a web page - your computer could be working on a cure for AIDS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease or certain types of cancer.

How, you may ask? By participating in a distributed computing project called Folding@home based at Stanford University. Since October 2000, the project has enlisted individual computer owners worldwide to donate their machines’ unused processing power to model the self-assembly or “folding” of protein molecules. Working together, the project’s network of over 100,000 personal computers is 100x more powerful than any supercomputer. Is the science good? Absolutely! Results have already been published in several landmark scientific papers. Check out the published article in the October 2002 issue of the scientific journal Nature at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature01160

Join us and put your unused computer power to work! All you need are 1) a Mac or PC with at least a 300 MHz processor, running OSX or Windows and 2) internet access. (Linux versions are also available) The folding program from Stanford installs effortlessly and runs at the lowest possible priority so that it immediately “gets out of the way” whenever your computer needs power for something else. You can play games, burn CDs, retouch photos, without the slightest change in the responsiveness of your system. The only difference you may notice is that the fans run more often. When you begin Folding, the program downloads a work unit (wu) and starts crunching through its computations. When it finishes, the program uploads the results and gets another unit. Depending on your setup, it can all be done automatically.

To keep things interesting for participants, the project uses a point system that helps people keep track of their project contributions. You can also create or join “folding teams” that offer technical support, camaraderie, and friendly competition for project ranking. There are thousands of teams in the project.

Why join Folding@home? Many of us have family or friends who have suffered or died from one of the diseases mentioned above. We want our children to enjoy a future free of those diseases. Now, ordinary computer users with no specialized research training can help investigate, and someday cure, debilitating and/or fatal diseases - all at minimal cost in time, money or effort. Most of us folders have also made new friends and had fun along the way. IMHO you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer bunch of people, overall, than the participants in this project. Why hesitate?

If you would like to learn more, come visit the Team MacOS X Forums at http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/foru...in/ikonboard.pl Have a look around a little to get a feel for us. Engage us in a discussion or two. Check out our links to learn more about the project – or try these:

An article written by one of our team members for her Mac user group newsletter: http://www.ismug.com/atree/0402/atr...foldingproteins

An Apple.com "Science Profiles" article from mid-2002 on Dr. Vijay Pande, the project director: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/stanford/

Another Apple.com article from March 2004 on Folding@home and our team captain Noah Johnson: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/proteinfolding/

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for staying with me. I hope to see you at our forums or read your comments below.

yellow · 01-11-2005, 04:46 PM

Date of last work unit: 2005-01-10 15:49:55
Total score: 18181
Overall rank (if points are combined): 19143 of 413442

Macaholic G5 · 01-11-2005, 05:21 PM

Nice! Glad to see the Folding@home project is getting around in the Mac community! Tell all your friends and family! Foldin' is golden!

Quote:


	Date of last work unit 2005-01-11 12:16:24 Total score 3027366 Overall rank (if points are combined) 12 of 413445

jeffo · 01-12-2005, 02:37 PM

hey macaholic and yellow, how long have you been doing this? what is an average time frame for completing one WU? what machine is it running on?

cwtnospam · 01-12-2005, 02:46 PM

I've been doing it for a little over a year. Only the last 7 months on a G5 though, and only as a screen saver. I also do www.d2ol.com as two background processes, one per processor! My Folding stats:

Date of last work unit
2005-01-10 17:24:39

Total score
12283

Overall rank (if points are combined)
27992 of 413695

Active processors (within 50 days)
1

Active processors (within 7 days)
1

yellow · 01-12-2005, 03:17 PM

I've not been doing it for much more then 4-6 months.

Macaholic G5 · 01-12-2005, 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffo


	hey macaholic and yellow, how long have you been doing this? what is an average time frame for completing one WU? what machine is it running on?

I've been part of F@h since February 2003. Before that I did SETI@home. Check out my .Mac Homepage to see all the hardware I fold with. Frame times can vary from one processor to the next. Let me know which machine you are looking at for frame times and I can give you more details. Be warned, my homepage is not for the faint of heart!

Semper Fold!

jeffo · 01-12-2005, 06:33 PM

Semper Fold! .... that is some funny stuff! lol

I have an extra G3/266 sitting around that i was thinking about running the client on pretty much full time to test it out with. it does not take much HD space does it.

Macaholic G5 · 01-12-2005, 07:16 PM

No. Some people actually run folding on USB pen drives. That G3 should make the deadlines if it does nothing but fold. Give it a try. If it will not complete regular work units you can set it to accept "timeless Tinkers" if you use the CLI client and then it really won't be a problem at all. If I've fold you once, I've fold you a thousand times! Just fold it!

jeffo · 01-13-2005, 04:11 PM

i installed it last night on said G3 and this morning i looked when i went to work (roughly 12 hours later) and it was a whopping 1.75% done! WWOOOOOHHHHOOOOO!!!!! The job it is doing now says that the max time is like 68 days so i don't think it will be a problem to meet the deadline at all.

that is all that machine will be doing for like 99.998% of itslife because i set it up to play some cheesy old games when i get a chance and i dont get a chance very much.

once i got it going on that one i put it on my dual G4 and this morning it was about 5% done after only about 8 hours. big difference. the problem with this is that it is using both processors at about 50%, I was expecting it to use both at 100%, am I wrong?

KA4EYT · 01-13-2005, 04:53 PM

I cannot think of a better way to use those otherwise wasted cpu cycles of all of these Macs of mine.

This is an important scientific cause and worthy of consideration by everyone! Check out the Stanford site when you have a chance.

The Team Mac OSX Forum members are one of the friendliest groups around - and graciously helpful (like everyone here at macosxhints!).

Count me in! Big time.

cwtnospam · 01-13-2005, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffo


	the problem with this is that it is using both processors at about 50%, I was expecting it to use both at 100%, am I wrong?

They're low priority processes. If you know what you're doing in Unix, you can increase their priority.

jeffo · 01-13-2005, 06:27 PM

I know you can change that in the CLI but i just didn't know if there was some setting i was missing. i think i would rather it running like it is actually, that machine kicks out the heat just sitting there idle so i don't think i want to have the processors cranked 24/7. either way, even though they are low priorities shouldn't it still crank the processors up and then give up cycles when something with a higher ranking calls for the CPU?

I am curious to see how much those two machines will have done by the time i get home in a few hours.

cpragman · 01-13-2005, 06:56 PM

Thanks for the tip. Today I joined the Mac OS X team.

cwtnospam · 01-13-2005, 06:57 PM

I'm not sure, but I think that low priority generally means that there's a limit to how much processor time a process gets even if nothing else is running as well as less processor time when something with a higher priority is.

Macaholic G5 · 01-13-2005, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffo


	the problem with this is that it is using both processors at about 50%, I was expecting it to use both at 100%, am I wrong?

Thanks for joining up! Now for the processor usage. Are you using InCrease to control the CLI clients? Looking at my PM G5 Dual 2.5 activity monitor I show 100% for each processor. 1 CLI client per processor.

MBHockey · 01-13-2005, 10:53 PM

How do i sign up for Team MacOS X? Do i just enter a number into the Team Number field within the application's preferences? (using the GUI version; 5.02)

KA4EYT · 01-13-2005, 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MBHockey


	How do i sign up for Team MacOS X? Do i just enter a number into the Team Number field within the application's preferences? (using the GUI version; 5.02)

The instructions on the team site can lead you through this. Please register on the site - and post if you have any questions.

YES. The Team number is 1971. Make sure that you pick out a unique username so that you will be able to follow your stats easily. Don't use an email address.

Take a look at the application "InCrease" on the team site. It gives you all the advantages of the GUI, is a snap to install (it sets up the CLI for you - you just set a few preferences), and also may even double your production.

Welcome aboard and THANKS!!

Macaholic G5 · 01-20-2005, 10:13 PM

Here you go! Proof positive that those spare CPU cycles are paving the way to a better tomorrow! Directly from the Folding@home News blog.

Quote:


	1/15/2005 First results from Folding@Home cancer project published. We have been studying the p53 tumor surpressor and our first results on p53 have recently been published. To our knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed results from a distributed computing project related to cancer. Thanks to the continued support of FAH donors, this is will be just the first of many cancer related works that will come from FAH. The nature of our results can best be described in our paper. However, here's a brief summary of our results. Roughly half of all known cancers result from mutations in p53. Our first work in the cancer area examines the tetramerization domain of p53. We predict how p53 folds and in doing so, we can predict which amino acid mutations would be relevant. When compared with experiments, our predictions have appeared to agree with experiment and give a new interpretation to existing data.

Feel free to take a look at the full abstract here. FOLD, it does a body good!

jeffo · 01-21-2005, 09:33 AM

with the randomness i have been running it on my G4 it should finish up with the first protein today by the time i get home so i will be on the boards! wooohooo!

01-11-2005, 04:15 PM	#1
Macaholic G5 Prospect Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: In my Apple orchard. Posts: 15	Pssst! The best MacOS X hint ever! Here it is; F-O-L-D! Just sit back and let your Mac do all the hard work even when it's not working! Every second of the day, millions of computers around the world are sitting around doing nothing at all. In fact, it’s been estimated that roughly 99 percent of the average personal computer’s processing power is idled and hence wasted. Why let your Mac or PC idle CPU cycles go to waste when they could be doing something really worthwhile? The next time you leave your keyboard and screen - or even pause to read a web page - your computer could be working on a cure for AIDS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease or certain types of cancer. How, you may ask? By participating in a distributed computing project called Folding@home based at Stanford University. Since October 2000, the project has enlisted individual computer owners worldwide to donate their machines’ unused processing power to model the self-assembly or “folding” of protein molecules. Working together, the project’s network of over 100,000 personal computers is 100x more powerful than any supercomputer. Is the science good? Absolutely! Results have already been published in several landmark scientific papers. Check out the published article in the October 2002 issue of the scientific journal Nature at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature01160 Join us and put your unused computer power to work! All you need are 1) a Mac or PC with at least a 300 MHz processor, running OSX or Windows and 2) internet access. (Linux versions are also available) The folding program from Stanford installs effortlessly and runs at the lowest possible priority so that it immediately “gets out of the way” whenever your computer needs power for something else. You can play games, burn CDs, retouch photos, without the slightest change in the responsiveness of your system. The only difference you may notice is that the fans run more often. When you begin Folding, the program downloads a work unit (wu) and starts crunching through its computations. When it finishes, the program uploads the results and gets another unit. Depending on your setup, it can all be done automatically. To keep things interesting for participants, the project uses a point system that helps people keep track of their project contributions. You can also create or join “folding teams” that offer technical support, camaraderie, and friendly competition for project ranking. There are thousands of teams in the project. Why join Folding@home? Many of us have family or friends who have suffered or died from one of the diseases mentioned above. We want our children to enjoy a future free of those diseases. Now, ordinary computer users with no specialized research training can help investigate, and someday cure, debilitating and/or fatal diseases - all at minimal cost in time, money or effort. Most of us folders have also made new friends and had fun along the way. IMHO you’d be hard pressed to find a nicer bunch of people, overall, than the participants in this project. Why hesitate? If you would like to learn more, come visit the Team MacOS X Forums at http://teammacosx.homeunix.com/foru...in/ikonboard.pl Have a look around a little to get a feel for us. Engage us in a discussion or two. Check out our links to learn more about the project – or try these: An article written by one of our team members for her Mac user group newsletter: http://www.ismug.com/atree/0402/atr...foldingproteins An Apple.com "Science Profiles" article from mid-2002 on Dr. Vijay Pande, the project director: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/stanford/ Another Apple.com article from March 2004 on Folding@home and our team captain Noah Johnson: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/proteinfolding/ If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for staying with me. I hope to see you at our forums or read your comments below. __________________ Donate your spare CPU cycles to help save lives. Visit www.teammacosx.com for more details. Thank you!

01-11-2005, 04:46 PM	#2
yellow Moderator Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 10,677	My folding stats.. Date of last work unit: 2005-01-10 15:49:55 Total score: 18181 Overall rank (if points are combined): 19143 of 413442

01-12-2005, 07:16 PM	#9
Macaholic G5 Prospect Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: In my Apple orchard. Posts: 15	No. Some people actually run folding on USB pen drives. That G3 should make the deadlines if it does nothing but fold. Give it a try. If it will not complete regular work units you can set it to accept "timeless Tinkers" if you use the CLI client and then it really won't be a problem at all. If I've fold you once, I've fold you a thousand times! Just fold it! __________________ Donate your spare CPU cycles to help save lives. Visit www.teammacosx.com for more details. Thank you!

01-12-2005, 02:37 PM	#4
jeffo All Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 713	hey macaholic and yellow, how long have you been doing this? what is an average time frame for completing one WU? what machine is it running on?

01-12-2005, 02:46 PM	#5
cwtnospam League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 8,475	I've been doing it for a little over a year. Only the last 7 months on a G5 though, and only as a screen saver. I also do www.d2ol.com as two background processes, one per processor! My Folding stats: Date of last work unit 2005-01-10 17:24:39 Total score 12283 Overall rank (if points are combined) 27992 of 413695 Active processors (within 50 days) 1 Active processors (within 7 days) 1

01-12-2005, 03:17 PM	#6
yellow Moderator Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 10,677	I've not been doing it for much more then 4-6 months.

01-12-2005, 06:33 PM	#8
jeffo All Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 713	Semper Fold! .... that is some funny stuff! lol I have an extra G3/266 sitting around that i was thinking about running the client on pretty much full time to test it out with. it does not take much HD space does it.

01-13-2005, 04:11 PM	#10
jeffo All Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 713	i installed it last night on said G3 and this morning i looked when i went to work (roughly 12 hours later) and it was a whopping 1.75% done! WWOOOOOHHHHOOOOO!!!!! The job it is doing now says that the max time is like 68 days so i don't think it will be a problem to meet the deadline at all. that is all that machine will be doing for like 99.998% of itslife because i set it up to play some cheesy old games when i get a chance and i dont get a chance very much. once i got it going on that one i put it on my dual G4 and this morning it was about 5% done after only about 8 hours. big difference. the problem with this is that it is using both processors at about 50%, I was expecting it to use both at 100%, am I wrong?

01-13-2005, 04:53 PM	#11
KA4EYT Prospect Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Virginia, USA Posts: 12	I cannot think of a better way to use those otherwise wasted cpu cycles of all of these Macs of mine. This is an important scientific cause and worthy of consideration by everyone! Check out the Stanford site when you have a chance. The Team Mac OSX Forum members are one of the friendliest groups around - and graciously helpful (like everyone here at macosxhints!). Count me in! Big time.

01-13-2005, 06:27 PM	#13
jeffo All Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 713	I know you can change that in the CLI but i just didn't know if there was some setting i was missing. i think i would rather it running like it is actually, that machine kicks out the heat just sitting there idle so i don't think i want to have the processors cranked 24/7. either way, even though they are low priorities shouldn't it still crank the processors up and then give up cycles when something with a higher ranking calls for the CPU? I am curious to see how much those two machines will have done by the time i get home in a few hours.

01-13-2005, 06:56 PM	#14
cpragman All Star Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Limerick, PA Posts: 860	Thanks for the tip. Today I joined the Mac OS X team.

01-13-2005, 06:57 PM	#15
cwtnospam League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 8,475	I'm not sure, but I think that low priority generally means that there's a limit to how much processor time a process gets even if nothing else is running as well as less processor time when something with a higher priority is.

01-13-2005, 10:53 PM	#17
MBHockey MVP Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: New York Posts: 2,211	How do i sign up for Team MacOS X? Do i just enter a number into the Team Number field within the application's preferences? (using the GUI version; 5.02)

01-21-2005, 09:33 AM	#20
jeffo All Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 713	with the randomness i have been running it on my G4 it should finish up with the first protein today by the time i get home so i will be on the boards! wooohooo!