Talk:Folding@home

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[edit] F@H-on-BOINC

The article says that Folding@BOINC is currently under development. What is the official status of that venture? It seems to the very casual observer that progress has stagnated at the very least. Billy the Impaler 13:18, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

BOINC requires that the project be made opensource to be able to use the BOINC system. The PandeGroup does not want to do that because of the [uncited] reasons in the article, so development has been stopped until further notice. 86.130.96.190 (talk) 15:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


Where do you read out that BOINC will mandate the use of OSS? Are all BOINC clients OSS?

194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Graphical processing units

"However, it should be noted that this exaggerates the performance increase of the GPU client over the CPU client: the CPUs that contribute to Folding@Home vary widely from new to old, high performance to low, whereas the GPU client runs on only the very latest GPUs from ATI Technologies. A comparison to the latest Opteron processor showed more modest gains, both in terms of performance in points and points-per-watt.[1]"

This statement is just wrong because a TFLOPS count and WU points are not comparable. WU points are tied to WU completion time, not to system performance running the WU.


—Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.204.35.117 (talk • contribs) 27 November 2006

  • To my reading, this section seems to include reference to the same recent public beta test twice. Could someone familar with the beta test clarify/consolidate this please?

Stanford has recently cited further advances with the high performance client and stated they will be releasing a public, beta trial at the end of September 2006. ... As of October 2, 2006, the FAH GPU client has been released into a public beta test.

Keesiewonder 01:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Let me be very specific. A CPU is a general purpose computing device. A GPU is a special purpose computing device designed to deal with data (usually visual) in three dimensions. Adding a graphics card to any system will allow GPU hardware to take over graphics tasks which would normally be emulated by CPU software. Adding a graphics card to any system will almost always result in a speedup depending upon the software. What the Folding@home people have done is to use the GPU to analyze protein (in three dimensions) rather than render a 3-d display. This is why the PS3-Client produces better results than the ATI-Client which produces better results than any CPU-client. --Neilrieck 11:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
    • The Pande Group objects to the use of the word "better" when pertaining to results, because it is not true. The only major difference between the three systems (CPU, GPU, PS3) is the speed... for accuracy it is single or double precision which is more important, and on that front, the CPU DGromacs (and its variants) and SMP cores, which use Double Precision, win out over the single precision GPU and PS3 for absolute accuracy and therefore theoretical quality of results. However, single precision seems to be accurate enough for most purposes, hence its usage on most of the other cores. Johnnaylor (talk) 18:47, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Can we use one name throughout the article.

Folding@home, Folding@Home, and FAH are all used in this article. Can we just use one? To make it even more complicated, Stanford's own websites uses both capitalizations... BebopBob 02:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, I think we shouled use Folding@home for the first time it is mentioned in each section and than F@H for each subsiquent reference. That way it would be constitant. The reason I think we should use Folding@home for the capitilization is because that is how it appears in tht title image on the website homepage. SirGrant 22:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have gone through this article and changed the first instance of F@H in every paragraph to Folding@home and all subsequent instances in that paragraph to F@H. Hope this helps with consistency. BebopBob 00:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The correct usage is Folding@home, with lower case h. This is dispite the commonly used abbreviations F@H and FAH. These are the common use because once caps or caps lock is pushed, most people type the whole abbreviation that way because it's easier to do it that way, and F@h doesn't quite look right. Folding@home and FAH are what's used on the project web site (although a few H will sneak in once in a while). Thanks.  ;) 7im (talk) 18:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Folding@Home teams sounds like an ad?

I was reading through this - the section "Folding@Home teams" sounds like an advertisement, or at the very least, not like an encyclopedia... should probably be fixed, or tagged with some template (i'm not sure which would be appropriate here). Fiskars007 18:16, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I removed some stuff that can't be verified, but the paragraph still puts a somewhat positive spin on the benefits of being on a team.--Planetary 00:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I added a NPOV template.--Donald Goldberg 01:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Fine, but what is the NPOV dispute here?

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.204.35.117 (talk • contribs) 13 February 2007

I don't think there's an NPOV dispute here, certainly not with the whole article, so I removed the NPOV template and added the advertisement template to the "Folding@home teams" section. 151.204.22.18 20:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC) (User:Daekharel, not logged in)

Agreed I don't think it is a problem with the article in general just that section that needs to be reworked SirGrant 21:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I rewrote it. I think it sounds better now. BebopBob 23:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed the link to the Imortality Institute, which claims to offer cash prizes. I consider it SPAM, self promoting, and offering bribes to come fold for their team. And they have their own WIKI entry, so they don't need to advertise in the FAH wiki entry! 7im (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your removal of that original link, but please do not remove the link to the news story that is available via Google News. [1] (first link) Thanks. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 19:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Folding@Home?

As far as I can tell, this article has always been at this title, with a redirect at Folding@Home. However, the proper name, as displayed on the project's website, is with a capitalized H. Should we move this article over redirect to the other one? Tuvok[T@lk/Improve me] 00:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Since there were no objections, I've made the move. --Ixfd64 18:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I do not understand. This project is really "Folding@home" at their website - with a small "h". See http://folding.stanford.edu/ . This sould really be moved to Folding@home. ---Majestic- (talk) 23:08, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I suspect the official website must have decided to change the capitalisation (assuming the above comments were correct). Therefore, I have altered the article now, and I suggest someone requests the article be renamed back (assuming the official website aren't going to change their mind again!). --Rebroad (talk) 10:07, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Publications

Surely this article should,have a list of publications or summary of results which have come from the Folding@Home project? Publication is an important part of any scientific research and arguably the reason for doing it (in that the whole purpose of research is to present new results). It would be really neat if F@H participants could read the Wikipedia article, see the results and think "Hey, I helped do that". Non participants would no doubt naturally ask the question "why" as they read the article? Results are part of the reason why F@H does what it does. John Dalton 23:36, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

The third paragraph mentions it. Are you saying that it should have a more prominent discussion on the papers? (like a full section) If there have been any major breakthroughs that have resulted, then I would tend to agree with you. Cardsplayer4life 23:53, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I'm quite curious what specific scientific knowledge has been gleaned from these simulations. Also, I think a mention of how the volunteers are credited for their work in these scientific papers should also be there. --seav (talk) 11:08, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Although it needs a fair amount of work, I have added a list of published results to the article. Johnnaylor (talk) 19:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Project summary page - Tinker core

I removed the remark about Tinker core being inactive: 16:17, 1 January 2008 194.204.35.117 (Tinker core is live and kicking - http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html)

This was rejected by: 15:19, 3 January 2008 86.130.96.190 (→How it works - the psummary page is out of date; it needs cleaning up. This has been pointed out to but not acted upon by the Pande Group.)

But the Project Summary page "definition" (http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Stats): Project summary (directly from the servers, updated hourly)

It is hard to believe that their hourly update will somehow misdetect or confuse the absence of Tinker projects and "magically" insert these back to the project list.


I've never heard as Tinker being dropped. Does anyone have data to back this claim?

194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:03, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Check the psummary page: All Tinker projects are no longer listed. Johnnaylor (talk) 10:45, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Estimated energy consumption (was Environmental impact)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding%40Home#Environmental_impact

A Playstation 3 has a maximum power rating of 380 Watts. As Folding@Home is a CPU intensive application, it causes 100% utilisation. Therefore the total power consumption required to produce the processing power required by the project can be estimated based upon the average FLOPS per Watt. As of 2007, according to the Green500 list, the most efficient computer runs at 357.23 MFLOPS/watt[3]. One petaFLOP equals 1,000,000,000 MFLOPS. Therefore, the current Folding@Home project, even if using the most efficient CPUs that exist, would be requiring 2.8 MegaWatts of power per petaFLOP of total processing power.

If this estimate is correct then what will it mean? Is it good or bad or what?

Is this useless data snippet or does it contain some info as well?

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1316


194.204.35.117 (talk) 18:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I have reverted your deletion, as you do not make it clear why it is "utterly pointless". If you could please explain your deletion. I think there are a sufficient number of people who would consider the energy usage of Folding@Home to be important/newsworthy, in the public interest, relevant, noteworthy, etc. As it is all of these, it is within Wikipedia guidelines for inclusion in the article. Cheers, --Rebroad (talk) 12:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I removed that remark as being "utterly pointless" because it does reveal no relevant information about the project. It only mangles with big numbers. I wonder why I do not see any other DC project or any other computing project article having this "environment" section? --194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
If this section is there to stay then who ever insisting of having it should at least read Wikipedia article on that subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact As much I read out from it, there should be clearly provided positive/negative impact to the nature/environment and not only stating some numbers.194.204.35.117 (talk) 16:28, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I am merely stating the facts. Any inference of positivity or negativity is down to the reader. --Rebroad (talk) 22:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
OK. I hope to see these types of facts posted to other DC articles as well. 194.204.35.117 (talk) 00:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I would add that I would agree that the section as it stands is not the most well written and doesn't flow as as it could. I would consider it perfectly acceptable for someone to re-word it if it can make it read better, but a complete deletion is nothing short of censorship, and considering that this seems to be one of the only articles you (194.204.35.117) edit on Wikipedia, it does seem that this topic may be one quite close to your heart, so apologies if we're not yet in agreement on the content matter. --Rebroad (talk) 12:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

How would you like that section to be modified? Who should do it? 194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
From time to time I'll try to add relevant information to this topic, but who am I to fight the mob... 194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:23, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I am assuming you are "KillerBeagle" who posts from the same IP address on various forums about Folding@Home topics and hosts related utilities to the project. Perhaps you would like to create a wikipedia user-id so that you can sign your contributions to the article rather than anonymously as you have done so far? --Rebroad (talk) 12:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

No, I am not "KillerBeagle". Are you sure it is the same IP address you are seeing?194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Does it make any difference if I identify myself by an imagined name? 194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)



15:46, 27 February 2008 Rebroad (Talk | contribs) (22,721 bytes) (valid points, but the discussion of the article belongs in the talk page, not the article itself.) (undo)
I do not understand the reason why my addition to that topic was removed:

But all those MegaWatt numbers are quite meaningless - you can not make any computational molecular dynamic research without using electric power. It is highly debatable if the electric power running all those FAH clients can be spent some better way or not. Is it a waste of resources or not is up to the individual Folding@home donator to decide.

What is wrong with those couple of sentences? What Wikipedia rule it does break? If it is being insisted that we should talk about it here then what does the current environmental impact section is supposed to state? I still think that it has no relevance to the FAH project. Can anyone prove me wrong?
194.204.35.117 (talk) 15:59, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I assumed you meant to discuss the article rather than add your comments to the article. I've never seen a wikipedia article addressing the reader with questions before. Also, what do you mean by "meaningless"? --Rebroad (talk) 22:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

What part there is my comment? Where do you see a single question of mine?
I call it meaningless because in it current form there is no context to place these numbers to. Reader is being hinted as FAH being a bad thing - look how many Watts it is wasting! Why is FAH any more worse than any other computer based research project? 194.204.35.117 (talk) 00:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The opening sentence is at best misleading, and at worst inflammatory towards the project. As stated above, no other DC entry has this section.

Any time you mix "Environmental Impact" and "380 watts" everyone is going to assume that's how much power is really used by the PS3 while folding, and that is as I said, misleading. Depending on which PS3 model and options you have, the range of ACTUAL power used when folding is from 140 to 200 watts (as measured by a Kill-a-Watt at the wall outlet). http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1265641

And while this new section was carefully written not to be too inflammatory towards F@h, most people will assume the worst and conclude the 2.8 MW were generated by a super polluting coal power plant and the tons of CO2 it would add. In reality, the conscientious individuals who donate to such a project are also more environmentally responsible. As such, it would be more responsible of this paragraph to note this. One CAN NOT assume all of this power comes from nuclear or coal plants, as in the next sentence in this section (see below)... And in fact, F@h is an international project, and many countries outside the US are much more environmentally friendly with their power production.

Take this statement for example: No additional nuclear/coal/... power plants are being built specifically because of the Folding@home DC system.

It mentions what most people consider to be the two worst types of power plants. I may be biased towards the project, but that is certainly biased against the project. Please change it to something less inflammatory... "No additional power plants" or "No additional nuclear/coal/wind/solar... power plants" See, balance.

So rebalance this sentence as well: "Therefore, the current Folding@Home project, even if using the most efficient CPUs that exist, would be requiring 2.8 MegaWatts of power per petaFLOP of total processing power."

It would be less inciting to say "Therefore, the current Folding@home project, using the most efficient CPUs, would require 2.8 MegaWatts of power per petaFLOP." Short, on topic, not misleading, not emotional, just straightforward facts with no hyperbole.

One last thought. Because we have absolutely no way to determine the production sources of that 2.8 MegaWatts, there is no way to determine the real environmental impact. We have no idea as to the mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, hydro, solar, thermal, or tidal generation sources that power the thousands of F@h users. As such, IMO, this Environmental Impact section is pointless and misleading unless more concrete numbers are supplied. Step up to complete the section or remove the section completely. The power used by the project can easily be stated in several of the other sections without drawing false conclusions, so IMO it should be removed. 7im (talk) 19:38, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

7im, thanks. I agree with pretty much 99% of what you say. I think it would also help if the 2.8 MegaWatts was described in real-world terms, as for most people the number may not mean much. For example, 2.8 MegaWatts is equivalent to the power required by some passenger trains (according to the MegaWatts article), or equivalent to twenty-eight thousand 100 Watts light bulbs running concurrently, or equivalent to 2800 electric fan heaters (the 1 kW type).
I get the feeling the above comments are to me rather than a discussion on how the article can be improved. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, so if you think adding some context such as those I mention above would help, then you should add it to the article. The main aims of wikipedia is that we should present the facts in an unbiased way, avoiding any personal opinion. As long as that is being done, everyone should (in theory!) be happy. Cheers, --Rebroad (talk) 20:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Rebroad. I am not new to editing wikis in general, nor to reading wikipedia. However, I am a new registrant here, so I didn't want to step on any toes my first time in. I would prefer to discuss a change prior to making it.

I do appreciate the very conservative numbers used in the original post. However, a friend of mine pointed out another fact to consider. If the computers running F@h at 100% power usage were not running F@h, most would still be sitting around still running at some unknown idle power usage. So we should consider the incrimental power used by F@h, not the total power used.

Again, I just don't see an easy way to accurately determine environmental impact. And a good estimate would take more time than I am able to give. I suppose one could start quoting the average idle power vs. 100% power of a typical PC, and the average mix of power production sources around the world weighted against the distribution of F@h users from each country, etc. Then estimate the CO2 produced by those various sources. And on, and on.

So I'll just throw this out as the proposed change. Environmental Impact is unknown. Here's a vague estimate of power used, but the mix of sources used to produce that power is also unknown. Either that, or delete it and point people back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact.

Let's let people chew on this for a bit. Give them a chance to respond, and then I'll happily make some changes if no serious objections appear. Regards, 7im (talk) 20:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, we can easily state the minimum power requirement for the FLOPS being generated. To speculate about what people would otherwise be doing with their PCs (if not running F@H) is tricky and therefore likely to lead to a lot of debate and original research, I suspect. Probably best avoided unless we can refer to some widely recognised numbers. --Rebroad (talk) 14:01, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article main picture

I am puzzled by Rebroad's assertion that the main picture needs to be made smaller so as not to take up too much horizontal screen space, particularly on computers using SVGA resolutions. The user uses the example of the Nokia N800 - while these devices are made for the point of accessing the internet, surely it is pointless to make the page smaller for the tiny number of users who view this particular wikipedia page on mobile devices, when this is a site designed for viewing on full-blown desktop and laptop computers. While the detrimental effect to the picture itself may be small, the program information box which contains the picture becomes squashed and all of the text underneath looks ridiculously cramped when the picture is made smaller. I have seen no other article subject to this strange idea, and would like to see it reverted. Does anybody else feel that this change is necessary, as well as Rebroad? Johnnaylor (talk) 16:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It is likely largely issue of different browsers. I can read the text just fine with my Firefox running Linux, but the image description is oddly placed - partially next to the image and partially under it. I recall as larger picture did not have this issue. Maybe there is a Wikipedia policy about it? Hopefully the Rebroad will point that out. 194.204.35.117 (talk) 17:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I have the same text placement issue On IE7/Windows XP. Johnnaylor (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I should probably point out, that I do not have any trouble actually reading the text, but it just looks odd, especially compared to what it looked like when the each client type fitted on its own single line. Johnnaylor (talk) 17:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi Johnnaylor. Where is it stated that this site is "designed for viewing on full-blown desktop and laptop computers" please? Do you mean to the exclusion of everything else? Also, what do you mean by "full-blown"? This website is in fact designed to be read by as many computers as possible, including PDAs, and various low-resolution displays. The engine provides the ability to identify the resolution of the display it is being rendered on, so it should not be necessary to hard-code sizes of images at all. It's a configurable preference per user also. More details available at Wikipedia:Extended image syntax --Rebroad (talk) 22:54, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, very well put. Consider all of my points answered, except for one; why do most other pages on wikipedia use large images, and yet the article on F@H cannot? i.e. why change the one for F@H and not those on other pages. Surely a bot could be built to resize pictures if the need is so great? Johnnaylor (talk) 15:41, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Most other pages on Wikipedia use large images because not enough people are familiar with how MediaWiki works, and have not read the applicable Wikipedia Guidelines and Policies. A bot is a very good idea indeed! I hope someone writes one soon! --Rebroad (talk) 20:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Results (and better summarisation of them)

I believe it's important that results be better summarized in lay language or in such a manner that they explain better what the results are all about and what they may lead to. -Mardus (talk) 15:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The project is known with a small "h" nowadays: Folding@home. See their official website: [2] ---Majestic- (talk) 22:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it should be moved. Lower case "h" is now used. Cardsplayer4life (talk) 22:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)