EggXpert

The Eggxpert Folding @ Home team FAQ 

This post is to give some more information to people who may want to join in and helpout a great cause!
A special thank you to justeric78 for making this post & rez410 for creating our account.
 

 
Folding@Home is a project run by Stanford University you can find the homepage here: http://folding.stanford.edu/

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Cancer
• Huntington's Disease
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta
• Parkinson's Disease
• Ribosome & antibiotics

When I first started doing this I was afraid it would take up all the processing power of my machine and would make it hard to use. I found however after using it for over a week now that it is set to such a low priority that you will never know it's running. I have been gaming, browing, and emailing etc and have not had any ill effects. The project is ligitimate and obviously does not have any viruses or spyware in the download package. You can find answers to almost any of your questions here at there forum:

Fodling@Home Forum

 

The Eggxpert team number is 70567

When you first startup the program it will ask for your username and the team number. You can use whatever you like as a username however I would check the site first to make sure the name hasnt been used. You can do a search for that here:

Team Stats Page

This project can be fun as well because it ranks the teams and individuals by how much work they have done. You can see our teams score here:

Team Eggxpert Scores

Finally you can check how many work units we have completed as a team here:

Team Eggxpert Work Units Completed

If you have any questions about the program or need help please feel free to PM me.

The link to download there many different clients are here:

Client Download Page

Make sure you read all there FAQs and install instructions!! Happy folding folks lets do some good out there!!

 

Using the new synchrotron beam line at Brookhaven and the MAD technique that he developed, Wayne Hendrickson and his associates solved the structure of an important part of the receptor for insulin on human cells, the tyrosine kinase domain. Mutations in this domain have been implicated in late-onset diabetes.

http://www.hhmi.org/annual94/b150.html

In this article they didnt even have the Folding at Home at their disposal. What it covers is not exactly news. It's all related. Our bodies are made of and controlled by protiens

 

AsYLuMDeMoN:

I've been thinking about this whole folding thing, but if they added Diabeties to the list i'd be all up in that... (Since I gots it n all :/)

lol.

I could easily setup like 8 of my 14 ( the rest are being used by other peeps like 24/7/365) comps plus my 360 if possible to fold -_-

The 360 isn't capable to run the F@H projects... as of yet anyway...  Sony and the PS3 design team worked closely with the software developers for a while to make the PS3 easily capable to run the F@H projects... In fact.. they are able to turn over most WU's in under 8 hours... Where it takes me just about 1 day to turn one over using my e6600 with the SMP folding software.  The biggest reason the PS3 is easily able to do this is because the OS is based off of Linux and thus is a bit more programmer friendly then is the 360... beyond that.. the PS3 has 8 CPU cores.. which really push that work through in a hurry... as the SMP folding software was primarily developed for 4 processors with an additional processor for management.

 I have found it interesting though.. if you have a ATI x1950 XT video card... your able to push out WU's faster then with most Multi core systems... because of the way the code is written to utilize the Shade processors on the card... (as there are 48 of them)  Anyway... just some extra info for those who might have that capability...  Hopefully I will myself be able to utilize the ATI video code... Gotta wait till the card I want gets back in stock though...
 

so i take it my overclocked 7950GX2 can push it some :P

Only the 1950xt will fold. I take that back the 1650xt will also but it is really slow.

I wish you could run the CPU and GPU clients at once without slowing it all down..I switched over my wifes comp which has a 1950 in it to the GPU client and she is pushing out 2 WUs a day now instead of just the one.

AsYLuMDeMoN:

I could easily setup like 8 of my 14 ( the rest are being used by other peeps like 24/7/365) comps plus my 360 if possible to fold -_-

The folding@home community is working on trying to convince Microsoft and nvidia.... Been trying to convince Microsoft to make a contribution and port the client over to their Xbox 360 so they can compete against the PS3.

Although the PS3 has an awesome processor, the Xbox 360 has an awesome GPU that the PS3 doesn't have. I wrote the wiki for the Xbox 360 if you're interested in checking it out.

http://fahwiki.net/index.php/Alternative_FAH_Platforms 

 

AsYLuMDeMoN:

so i take it my overclocked 7950GX2 can push it some :P

Actually, none of the nvidia GPUs are supported at this time. Nvidia has bugs in their drivers and they're not currently capable of doing any useful scientific computation for folding@home.. Communication between the folding@home GPU programming team and nvidia has been going on for over 8 months and nvidia is well aware of the problems in their drivers and hasn't fixed it yet.. I'm guessing the reason they haven't fixed it yet is because if they do, they might take a performance hit and put their cards more in-line with the ATI ones.. So I don't think it's a priority at nvidia.. For now, those who want to fold on their GPUs should buy the X1900 series ATI cards. The newer 2900 HD cards don't really work so well yet though the GPU client is still beta.. ( I don't even think support for the 2900 XT cards has even been released yet actually but we know it sorta-works. Just not as fast as it should since there are still some serious overhead problems inherent in the DirectX 9 shaders that's being used at the moment.) A shift to ATI/AMD CTM is planned and all those running ATI cards for folding@home should see a decent performance boost in their folding performance. (about 20% perhaps when the CTM backend for Brook comes out of Beta.).

nVidia has said that the client should be ported over to CUDA to support nvidia GPUs. The problem with that is the CUDA nvidia drivers can't play games and are only for scientific compuation.. So it's either games or science when it comes to the nvidia drivers and you'll be switching back and forth. For this reason, a CUDA back-end to Brook isn't planned..  Again, that's why I recommend the ATI cards for folding right now.. I'm an nvidia fan myself, and am waiting for nvidia to build the drivers that are capable of running FAH and playing games at the same time, might be a long time before that happens! The ATI cards presently can run both folding@home and play games on the same drivers (though you can't do both at the same time!).. Waiting on nvidia to fix their regular non-CUDA drivers so people don't have to swap video drivers everytime they want to run folding@home.

 

justeric78:

I wish you could run the CPU and GPU clients at once without slowing it all down..I switched over my wifes comp which has a 1950 in it to the GPU client and she is pushing out 2 WUs a day now instead of just the one.

Yes, unfortunately the current method for running folding@home on the GPU has a lot of overhead (for each GPU client, you need a CPU core to feed it).. It is quite possible to reduce the overhead and there are a lot of optimizations that can be done, most of the potential is in Vista with DirectX10 I believe, but I think when the new GPU client with the CTM support is released, it will reduce the overhead as well since it moves DX9 out of the picture.. But I'm not sure on this..  Right now, the GPU client is made for DX9 since many people are still running Windows XP and I believe the client isn't yet coded (hopefully soon!)  to take advantage of any of the performance boosts that DX10 could give with reduced overhead..

Sidicas:

nVidia has said that the client should be ported over to CUDA to support nvidia GPUs. The problem with that is the CUDA nvidia drivers can't play games and are only for scientific compuation.. So it's either games or science when it comes to the nvidia drivers and you'll be switching back and forth. For this reason, a CUDA back-end to Brook isn't planned..  Again, that's why I recommend the ATI cards for folding right now.. I'm an nvidia fan myself, and am waiting for nvidia to build the drivers that are capable of running FAH and playing games at the same time, might be a long time before that happens! The ATI cards presently can run both folding@home and play games on the same drivers (though you can't do both at the same time!).. Waiting on nvidia to fix their regular non-CUDA drivers so people don't have to swap video drivers everytime they want to run folding@home.

 

 

Maybe they will surprise us and  we can fold with the next set of drivers. Would it take advantage of SLI?

justeric78:

I wish you could run the CPU and GPU clients at once without slowing it all down..I switched over my wifes comp which has a 1950 in it to the GPU client and she is pushing out 2 WUs a day now instead of just the one.

 

lol yea your really knocking them out...17 already. I have 5 but I havent been folding the last 2 days due to HDD/Raid issues. But im back up folding again. Team rank is currently 7985 and rising quickly lol.

rez410:

Maybe they will surprise us and  we can fold with the next set of drivers. Would it take advantage of SLI?

You can use multiple graphics cards to run folding@home on.
The cards are given totally separate data to work on so there is no benefit of SLI/Crossfire at the moment as far as I know.

Edit: Wow! You all are Wayyyy ahead of me, some of you even have more total points than me.. I'm very impressed by your contributions!! I guess it's time for me to upgrade some of my boxen to catch up to you all I'm still waiting for my boxes to finish their first workunit after recently being switched to the eggxpert team...

haha I am only kicken butt to give you guys something to work for !! There is always someone with more computers and a better setup though so I am sure I will get passed sooner or later...Hopefully later though lol. I am proud of all the people who have signed up and to see us moving up so fast. Go Team EggXpert!! woot!!

This thread needs to be on the front forum page so it can draw more attention. Cmon this is important. Alot of other forums have it on front so it's one of the first thing seen when entering the forum page. We need a Folding community section.

KennyMcClellan:

This thread needs to be on the front forum page so it can draw more attention. Cmon this is important. Alot of other forums have it on front so it's one of the first thing seen when entering the forum page. We need a Folding community section.

 

It will. Not only that, but we will send a mass email as well regarding this. We are currently working on the explanation of this to make it a bit more easy to understand its concept. We need to make it totally easy to understand to a non computer user. Once we have it all fully explained and ready, we will not have it as a thread, but instead will have its own page.

Everyone is invited to help pitch in to this project. We are working on more FAQs, and whatever we can do. Any webmasters out there willing? Need your help in something for this project. Thanx.

 

Cool and ty for response

Makes a lot of sense to me.. I know a lot of people over at the folding@home forums link to newegg.com when planning out builds for dedicated folding boxes, clusters of diskless systems, sets of graphics cards,  etc. The free shipping and bulk pricing makes newegg the favorite for building computers for folding.. (Though ZipzZoomfly comes in at a close 2nd).

jcarlos:

KennyMcClellan:

This thread needs to be on the front forum page so it can draw more attention. Cmon this is important. Alot of other forums have it on front so it's one of the first thing seen when entering the forum page. We need a Folding community section.

 

It will. Not only that, but we will send a mass email as well regarding this. We are currently working on the explanation of this to make it a bit more easy to understand its concept. We need to make it totally easy to understand to a non computer user. Once we have it all fully explained and ready, we will not have it as a thread, but instead will have its own page.

Everyone is invited to help pitch in to this project. We are working on more FAQs, and whatever we can do. Any webmasters out there willing? Need your help in something for this project. Thanx.

 

 

I have the first page done on the FAQ I am still working on it so if there are more ideas then let me know. There is so much data already on the Stanford page I am trying to take advantage of it and not just type it all out over and over instead just linking pages. I am sure Carlos will put up what I have so far soon.  

justeric78:

I have the first page done on the FAQ I am still working on it so if there are more ideas then let me know. There is so much data already on the Stanford page I am trying to take advantage of it and not just type it all out over and over instead just linking pages. I am sure Carlos will put up what I have so far soon.  

 

Below is what we have so far. Feel free to reply and suggest additions, etc. Remember . . . our target audience are non computer users.

- Juan Carlos 

 

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rez410's input 

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The basic windows Graphical version can typically be run without any
configuration changes.  This was designed this way for those not so
computer savvy so that they wouldn't have any issues in making their
contributions.

Why should someone contribute their computers Idle time to this cause?
Well... the folding project was designed to do research on proteins.
Proteins are one of the essential components to make all living things
function correctly.  This research aides in the development for many
types of drugs and therapies for those that are afflicted with cell
problems that are caused by or result in misshapen proteins.  One of
these possible protein failure issues is believed to cause cancer, or
better put allow cancerous cells to not die like they should.  Some of
this research is also being done to try to find out why certain
proteins fold improperly...  These misshapen proteins are believed to be
the cause of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cystic Fibrosis, Mad Cow,
one form of Emphysema, as well as Cancer.

 

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Justeric78's input 

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Want to help find a cure for many common diseases but don’t know how you can help?

 

EggXpert has the perfect way to get involved! Stanford University has created a program that they are using to help find cures for some common diseases.

What is your computer doing when you are away doing something else? It is most likely sitting there doing nothing at all wasting all of that wonderful computing power!

Have you ever heard of distributed computing? This term on it’s face basically means using multiple computers to do a piece of work to come up with an answer. Think of it as a group of people sitting together brainstorming the answer to a complex question.

As mentioned above Stanford University is running a program that uses this distributed computing to utilize as many computers as possible to find the cure for many common diseases such as:

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Cancer
• Huntington's Disease
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta
• Parkinson's Disease
• Ribosome & antibiotics

You may ask yourself now how can our computers make the difference in finding the cure for these diseases? Simply put our bodies are made up of what is called proteins. Proteins are necklaces of amino acids - long chain molecules. Proteins are the basis of how biology gets things done. As enzymes, they are the driving force behind all of the biochemical reactions which make biology work. As structural elements, they are the main constituent of our bones, muscles, hair, skin and blood vessels. As antibodies, they recognize invading elements and allow the immune system to get rid of the unwanted invaders. For these reasons, scientists have sequenced the human genome -- the blueprint for all of the proteins in biology -- but how can we understand what these proteins do and how they work?

Since proteins play such fundamental roles in biology, scientists have sequenced the human genome. The genome is in a sense a "blueprint" for these proteins -- the genome contains the DNA code which specifies the sequence of the amino acids beads along the protein "necklace."

However, only knowing this sequence tells us little about what the protein does and how it does it. In order to carry out their function (eg as enzymes or antibodies), they must take on a particular shape, also known as a "fold." Thus, proteins are truly amazing machines: before they do their work, they assemble themselves! This self-assembly is called "folding."

One of our project goals is to simulate protein folding in order to understand how proteins fold so quickly and reliably, and to learn how to make synthetic polymers with these properties.

So like I said do you want to be able to help find a cure? Rez410 has created a team on Stanford’s folding site for EggXpert.  If you join this team you can let your computer run while not be used to help fold these proteins and hopefully find cures for these horrible diseases.

 

How do I join the team?

All you need to do is go to the following site and choose which client would work best for you. http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

 

How do I install the client?

Next to each different client there is a link for installation instructions which will walk you through step by step to get started.

 

How do I tell Stanford that I am on EggXpert’s team?

When you first start your client it will ask you for a Username and Team number. You will want to run a search for whatever username you want to use to make sure someone else hasn’t already selected it. You can do this search here :  http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userstats

 

If the username is not listed there feel free to use it in the client setup. The setup will then ask you what team you want to fold for. There are many thousands of teams that donate time to the Folding@Home project however EggXpert’s team number is : 70567

 

Where do I find the statistics for the team and I?

There is a points system setup for fun on the site so that they can rank the different teams and there users. You can find EggXpert’s team page at : http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=70567

You can also find your stats once you have completed at least one work unit by going to the above team page and clicking your name or by going to the above search URL and searching for your name again.

You can find the teams score here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/awards/tcert.php?u=70567

The teams Work Unit’s completed here: http://fah-web.stanford.edu/awards/tcert.php?u=70567&pts=40&t=wus&bg=4

 

I am interested and would love to help but would like more information on this where can I look?

There are a ton of resources available to give you all the information you could possible want on this subject at the following pages.

 

Folding@Home main page: http://folding.stanford.edu/

Client Download Page: http://folding.stanford.edu/download.html

Official Folding@Home FAQ Page : http://folding.stanford.edu/faq.html

Folding@Home User Forum: http://forum.folding-community.org/

I'm going to make a few comments and suggestions.. I don't want it to totally sound like I'm totally shooting this down.. I just want it to be a little more bulletproof before going public.. 

jcarlos:

EggXpert has the perfect way to get involved! Stanford University has created a program that they are using to help find cures for some common diseases.

Program -> Software. Program could be anything, a donations program? A charity program? A drug abuse help-line program?

 

jcarlos:

What is your computer doing when you are away doing something else? It is most likely sitting there doing nothing at all wasting all of that wonderful computing power!

eh, most people think their computer is too slow to do anything very useful... When they can't play the latest games, don't have the disk space to upgrade to office, etc. etc. They're going to think that this is only for people with high-end systems..  
wonderful -> (delete).

 

jcarlos:

  This term on it’s face basically means using multiple computers to do a piece of work to come up with an answer. Think of it as a group of people sitting together brainstorming the answer to a complex question.

Immediately, again.. People would stop reading right here thinking that this is only for people with many computers.. You need to be careful about where you bring this sort of information into the post. If you bring it in too early without explaining properly, many people aren't going to understand that their computer can do anything useful and are going to be too impatient to read the whole thing.

 

jcarlos:

As mentioned above Stanford University is running a program that uses this distributed computing to utilize as many computers as possible to find the cure for many common diseases such as:

"As mentioned above" -> (delete)

Program -> Software

Must explain distributed before trying to use it.. Most people will think that they're going to need a network of mainframes or something...  It's very difficult for people to believe that regular desktop computers can do anything scientific at all.

 

jcarlos:

 

You may ask yourself now how can our computers make the difference in finding the cure for these diseases? Simply put our bodies are made up of what is called proteins.

Gotta be careful here.. Our bodies are not all proteins, if they were, we'd all be a big pile of goop that oozes around...

 Don't forget to add an entry in the FAQ explaining that there are multiple clients available and many ways to participate.. Using the PS3, your ATI X1600 (etc. be specific of the supported cards) graphics cards, and your CPU (whether it is a dual, quad, or high core machine).

 

Honestly, there is one huge flag with posting this artlcle.  It's all text! Nobody wants to read all that! IT's just too much..   Instead, start with a flash animation. There are a few of these, and I'll dig one up and post it here if I can..  (Be right back in a minute folks!)

 

Edit: You need to be clear that Genome@home is different from folding@home.. They were two totally different projects and I don't believe Genome@home is still running..  Right now, all the folding@home projects are simulating protein folding with Gromacs.

Sometimes videos speak better than words, you just gotta watch out for those icky copyright issues if they're using songs...

A lot of teams have created their own promotional videos, and it'd be great if we make one for EggXpert...

 Folding for our future video.

Team Short-Media video.

Folding-community: PowerPoint presentation made by enhanced08dotcom.

Folding-community: Recruiting

http://forum.folding-community.org/viewtopic.php?t=14112

 

 

 

Alot of that was taken directly from the Stanford page so if people are going to have problems with some of your quotes then they are going to have problems with the entire project and don't really need to be involved. Also yes our bodies are all proteins even the bones which keep us from being a big pile of poop again this was taken directly from Stanford's page...You want to argue with there scientists?
As far as things left out this is why I made as many links as possible to the main Stanford page. Why reinvent the wheel when they have all the information on there page you could possibly. My FAQ for the most part were to point people to the different parts of there site so they could get answers to whatever questions they may have instead of trying to put all of that information into on long page no one wants to read.

Hi everybody!

This is what your computer is doing. Its plotting atoms in 3 dimentional space. It isn't that hard for your PC to handle it is only working on a very small part of a very large puzzle. That is why they split of little chunks and have many many donors machines work on it. "Many Hands Make Light Work"

here take a look.....

 

#####################################################
###############################################################################

                       Folding@Home Client Version 5.04beta

                          http://folding.stanford.edu

###############################################################################
###############################################################################

Launch directory: C:\Documents and Settings\Bob\My Documents\F@H
Service: C:\Documents and Settings\Bob\My Documents\F@H\FAH504-Console.exe
Arguments: -svcstart

Launched as a service.
Entered C:\Documents and Settings\Bob\My Documents\F@H to do work.

[09:15:44] - Ask before connecting: No
[09:15:44] - User name: Mr. Chris (Team 13285)
[09:15:44] - User ID: E7FED352B95F8F4
[09:15:44] - Machine ID: 1
[09:15:44]
[09:15:44] Loaded queue successfully.
[09:15:44] + Benchmarking ...
[09:15:46]
[09:15:46] + Processing work unit
[09:15:46] Core required: FahCore_78.exe
[09:15:46] Core found.
[09:15:46] Working on Unit 09 [May 24 09:15:46]
[09:15:46] + Working ...
[09:15:47]
[09:15:47] *------------------------------*
[09:15:47] Folding@Home Gromacs Core
[09:15:47] Version 1.90 (March 8, 2006)
[09:15:47]
[09:15:47] Preparing to commence simulation
[09:15:47] - Looking at optimizations...
[09:15:47] - Files status OK
[09:15:53] - Expanded 3063805 -> 16578173 (decompressed 541.0 percent)
[09:15:53]
[09:15:53] Project: 2417 (Run 43, Clone 9, Gen 4)
[09:15:53]
[09:15:54] Assembly optimizations on if available.
[09:15:54] Entering M.D.
[09:16:16] (Starting from checkpoint)
[09:16:16] Protein: p2417_Ribo_Cl
[09:16:16]
[09:16:16] Writing local files
[09:16:16] Completed 55000 out of 250000 steps  (22)
[09:16:22] Extra SSE boost OK.
[09:55:29] Writing local files
[09:55:29] Completed 57500 out of 250000 steps  (23)
[10:34:31] Writing local files
[10:34:32] Completed 60000 out of 250000 steps  (24)
[11:13:36] Writing local files
[11:13:36] Completed 62500 out of 250000 steps  (25)
[11:52:36] Writing local files
[11:52:37] Completed 65000 out of 250000 steps  (26)
[12:31:40] Writing local files
[12:31:41] Completed 67500 out of 250000 steps  (27)
[13:10:55] Writing local files
[13:10:55] Completed 70000 out of 250000 steps  (28)
[13:49:56] Writing local files
[13:49:57] Completed 72500 out of 250000 steps  (29)
[14:29:01] Writing local files
[14:29:01] Completed 75000 out of 250000 steps  (30)
[15:07:03] Writing local files
[15:07:03] Completed 77500 out of 250000 steps  (31)
[15:46:03] Writing local files
[15:46:04] Completed 80000 out of 250000 steps  (32)
[16:25:07] Writing local files
[16:25:08] Completed 82500 out of 250000 steps  (33)
[17:04:23] Writing local files
[17:04:24] Completed 85000 out of 250000 steps  (34)
[17:43:24] Writing local files
[17:43:24] Completed 87500 out of 250000 steps  (35)
[18:22:25] Writing local files
[18:22:26] Completed 90000 out of 250000 steps  (36)
[19:01:27] Writing local files

 

Does that seem so hard, to help ease the suffering and sadness of your children and grandchildren?

justeric78:

Also yes our bodies are all proteins even the bones ...taken directly from Stanford's page

lol, are you serious? That's got to be embarassing for Stanford if that's the case. I think you might have just misunderstood something. Proteins do work, they make stuff like bones.. But bones are not proteins as far as I know..

 

justeric78:

...You want to argue with there scientists?

Everytime I have, I've been wrong.. So no, not really..But at least I learn something right?

justeric78:

As far as things left out this is why I made as many links as possible to the main Stanford page. Why reinvent the wheel when they have all the information on there page you could possibly. My FAQ for the most part were to point people to the different parts of there site so they could get answers to whatever questions they may have instead of trying to put all of that information into on long page no one wants to read.

That's what I agree with.. More links to the Stanford page. It already has all the information needed. I think what should be written by us is not the explaination of folding@home.. But something that is specific to eggXpert. Leave the science explanations to the scientists...

I'm sorry if I seem to nit-pick at the little details. You did a good job and took a lot of time writing all this up.. Which is totally awesome.
 

BUMP!!!

I say all you people go buy PS3s so you can blow the other teams out of the water (and do something good and nice at the same time...and faster, too)!

I used to do S@H before it shifted to BOINC, and since then, I haven't done any DC, but I *may* start up again..not sure yet.
 

Actually running the SMP client on an E6600 should give you more points per day than the PS3.. But of course a complete E6600 build will likely cost u more than a PS3..

E6600 running SMP: ~1350 Points per day
Q6600 running SMP: ~2700 points per day
PS3:                              ~900 points per day..

The PS3 certainly is quite beatable Points per day is under the condition that you're running the system 24/7.. Points is also an approximate measure of scientific contribution which includes many factors such as the flexibility of the processor (Desktop CPUs are more flexible in the work they can do compared to the stream procs in the PS3 and GPUs) and also points depend on the performance of the processor.
 

Ermm....all the research I've done shows the contrary...can you support your findings aside from point values?  I'd be interested to research further.