How the hell do you fit 23 295s in one machine?

[rainless]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/foldinghome_user_crams_23_geforce_gtx_295_videocar ds_a_single_server

Duct tape?

[necrokiller]

haha yeah I just read that a few hours ago. damn! no idea

[Zimpo]

Woah!

[liftedcj7on44s]

maximum pc is behind a little bit. This is old news.

[rainless]

maximum pc is behind a little bit. This is old news.

And they didn't answer my question: How did he do it?

[blakehenry00]

Looks like a server style rack.

[VinnyTAMU]

Looks like a server style rack.

Yes, the title is misleading. It should read:

"Folding@Home User Crams 23 GeForce GTX 295 Videocards into a Single Rack"

[BoT]

well at least now we know why they surpassed team32
will be hard to catch up as long as this thing is running

[torin3]

well at least now we know why they surpassed team32
will be hard to catch up as long as this thing is running

Atlas folds for a different team than MPC. He isn't helping them.

[BoT]

oh, it's just the article, geez i thought he was. he could run a team all by himself
well then, i will be supporting team 32 for the april run

[defiant79]

anyone know where he got the case/rack from? Thats an interesting idea, but the only racks I can find are $450+ and another several hundred for sliding trays.

[Neuromancer]

And they didn't answer my question: How did he do it?

From th pic on that article you posted, it is running 5 r 6motherboards in a server rack.

He has a blog with more pics and information about it.
http://atlasfolding.com/

[nd4spdbh2]

thats just retarded..... folding like that is outta hand a waste of power and money IMO.

[juane414]

Is this guy folding for Maximum PC? That would explain why we are losing ground to them.

[doublejack]

thats just retarded..... folding like that is outta hand a waste of power and money IMO.

I think it comes down to a personal decision. I tend to fall on this side of the debate. We live in a world with finite resources. A dedicated folding farm like that consumes more than a trivial amount of energy, not to mention the resources that went into manufacturing the hardware. I can only view that as an efficient utilization of resources if there is some benefit to folding, which at this point there simply is not. Folding may lead to some answers, or it may lead to nothing.

I choose not to fold because I do not have a PC running 24/7. My utility bills are high enough, I just don't have the $200+ a year it would cost to leave a rig running all the time. In fact, over the past couple of years I've even taken steps to reduce my energy consumption, both at home and in my car. I've switched to CFL bulbs where possible. I added insulation to my home. I removed all my landscape lighting. I removed extra weight from my truck, such as the spare tire, jack, interior sound deadener, etc.

Now, I think if someone is going to leave their PC on around the clock 7 days a week, then why not put it to use folding? That will only increase the energy consumed by a relatively small amount, while providing the possibility of finding a cure for some medical conditions. That's pretty clearly a win-win. A server farm like the one in this article, though, that is not necessarily beneficial to mankind as a whole.

However, I believe that as long as the owner of the server feels like they're doing something and they can afford the hardware and operating cost of such a setup, then they are free to go ahead and do it. But I tend to categorize such a person in a similar class as someone that drives their Hummer at 85mph down the freeway when gas is $4+ a gallon. It takes someone with more resources than I have to pull something like that off, and even if I had the resources you wouldn't find me doing it.

[ratbuddy]

thats just retarded..... folding like that is outta hand a waste of power and money IMO.

Says the guy with 4 computers and a giant TV in his sig..

[Shiggity]

Says the guy with 4 computers and a giant TV in his sig..

lol

TBH I would have to think that donating that money directly to F@H would have been a better investment. I mean that has to be 15-20k in hardware.

I do not want to see that energy bill.

[deathman20]

Wouldn't of it been better to buy PS3's? For the workload that is PS3's put out more and you can get quiet a few with the amount he purchased in just GPU's alone not talking the CPU/motherboards/ram/harddrives/PSU's to make them run.

[Shiggity]

Wouldn't of it been better to buy PS3's? For the workload that is PS3's put out more and you can get quiet a few with the amount he purchased in just GPU's alone not talking the CPU/motherboards/ram/harddrives/PSU's to make them run.

I'd rather give the money to F@H so they can hire more software engineers to make the code better. Or another rack to crunch people's results, so they can get the research out faster to the public.

Code optimizations increase production way more than 23 GTX's ever could.

[benbaked]

Wouldn't of it been better to buy PS3's? For the workload that is PS3's put out more and you can get quiet a few with the amount he purchased in just GPU's alone not talking the CPU/motherboards/ram/harddrives/PSU's to make them run.

Even 50 PS3s would only get him 45k points per day, maybe 50k. A farm of PS3s might be a better choice for the science itself, I'm not sure, but if it's PPD domination that guy is after then a farm of powerful nvidia GPUs is the way to go.

[nd4spdbh2]

Says the guy with 4 computers and a giant TV in his sig..

says the guy with 3 computer and one netbook..

main rig is undervolted, on maybe 8 hrs a day
HTPC is on 6 hrs a week (thus the tv is on about 12 hrs a week)
netbook consumes a stupid lil amount of energy

Server is on 24 hrs a day but e4300 @ 1.8ghz with speed step and C1E enabled pad mod undervolted 25% all perfierials turned off... consumes ~ 60w

like others have said, if that guy REALLY wanted to help the cause out he woulda donated the money that he spent not only to build it but to power it to optimize the code ... so that EVERYONES PPD would increase.

I just feel like huge farms like that are just retarded. Now if u have a comp on 24/7 and feel the need to fold go for it, but i think its pointless to go outta ones way to build comps based solely for folding when the money can be better spent somewhere else.

I am done commenting about the subject of this thread. The sensitive nature of some of the people and mods on this forum and my strong opinions clash from time to time :beer: so i am going to stop before it goes to far LOL.

On the bright side that guy doesnt have a heating bill for his house :p

[e6600]

ive got one computer, and its been folding on avg about 24/5
i get about 25k ppw, and its very fun

i think people build huge farms for the sake of competition and showing off
its very similar to benchmarking and ocing, and most of all its FUN

[VinnyTAMU]

I think it comes down to a personal decision. I tend to fall on this side of the debate. We live in a world with finite resources. A dedicated folding farm like that consumes more than a trivial amount of energy, not to mention the resources that went into manufacturing the hardware. I can only view that as an efficient utilization of resources if there is some benefit to folding, which at this point there simply is not. Folding may lead to some answers, or it may lead to nothing.

I choose not to fold because I do not have a PC running 24/7. My utility bills are high enough, I just don't have the $200+ a year it would cost to leave a rig running all the time. In fact, over the past couple of years I've even taken steps to reduce my energy consumption, both at home and in my car. I've switched to CFL bulbs where possible. I added insulation to my home. I removed all my landscape lighting. I removed extra weight from my truck, such as the spare tire, jack, interior sound deadener, etc.

Now, I think if someone is going to leave their PC on around the clock 7 days a week, then why not put it to use folding? That will only increase the energy consumed by a relatively small amount, while providing the possibility of finding a cure for some medical conditions. That's pretty clearly a win-win. A server farm like the one in this article, though, that is not necessarily beneficial to mankind as a whole.


I cannot agree with this more.

[Gomeler]

Worst piece of editing I've seen in a long time. The spelling/grammar/mistakes were so bad it was hard to finish reading the article. That rack though is insane although the powerbill would be intense. I hope he's undervolted all those GTX295s, could possibly shave a good 10% off his power consumption.

[EarthDog]

I agree, hwo terribly written was that article? Title is brutally misleading and like gomler said the editing was horrible!

Anyway, impressive for the cause!

[PhoenixOfChaos]

ive got one computer, and its been folding on avg about 24/5
i get about 25k ppw, and its very fun

i think people build huge farms for the sake of competition and showing off
its very similar to benchmarking and ocing, and most of all its FUN


At the risk of offending someone, I'll try and make this as non-offensive as possible. But I've always gathered that as noble as folding is [I say this because AFAIK there is nothing shown that was unknown by it yet, at least anything relevant. ] it was mostly a competition to put as many overclockers or computer users together to show the robustness of their computers in comparison to other groups, and because a few years back when the economy was better, it was much easier to run your computer 24/7/365 without worrying about it, folding was easily done to both utilize your computer and help your team. I think though, in the coming months, with the economy the way it is, there will be a substantial decrease in it because individuals will need to cut corners wherever they can.

I know that I'll continue folding on my next rig, but If I won't be using the computer for > 2 hours I'll be turning it off to help do my part to ease the electric bill for my family because thankfully there are these people who make ridiculous machines who will cover my slack ;)

[rainless]

I am done commenting about the subject of this thread. The sensitive nature of some of the people and mods on this forum and my strong opinions clash from time to time :beer: so i am going to stop before it goes to far LOL.


Sensitive nature my ass... This is a TEAM RAINLESS thread.

Once the nature of the topic gets too sensitive: DOUBLE-DOWN! :p

I had no idea this thread would last this long. I was thinking "Maybe three replies..." and I was almost certain SOMEBODY would tell me how the hell he did it (what the hell is a "rack" anyway? I come from the audio world where a rack is something COMPLETELY different...)

In other... completely unrelated to anything even close to the thread topic... BOY was I tired when I got off work today... And I got off at 2pm!

Oh well... took a nap. Time to see if I can get into any trouble anywhere...

[benbaked]

(what the hell is a "rack" anyway?

It's an equipment rack, capable of housing various pieces of equipment (i.e. servers, telecom, switches, etc.). I didn't read the whole MaximumPC article but from the looks of the picture the guy has a typical looking equipiment rack with shelving and a motherboard on each shelf. Nothing special really, and it doesn't look all that different then other racks I've seen by members of our own folding team, with the exception of all of the GTX295s of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19-inch_rack

[nd4spdbh2]

Sensitive nature my ass... This is a TEAM RAINLESS thread.

Once the nature of the topic gets too sensitive: DOUBLE-DOWN! :p

I had no idea this thread would last this long. I was thinking "Maybe three replies..." and I was almost certain SOMEBODY would tell me how the hell he did it (what the hell is a "rack" anyway? I come from the audio world where a rack is something COMPLETELY different...)

In other... completely unrelated to anything even close to the thread topic... BOY was I tired when I got off work today... And I got off at 2pm!

Oh well... took a nap. Time to see if I can get into any trouble anywhere...

lol u kno what i mean rainless... i know ur not the shall we say "sensitive emotional type" who goes whining to a mod at a debate of this nature, but may others are on this form are and well i have a coupla infractions on my profile from those people haha.

rack = Server rack... just an efficient space saving way to stack computers.

[rainless]

It's an equipment rack, capable of housing various pieces of equipment (i.e. servers, telecom, switches, etc.). I didn't read the whole MaximumPC article but from the looks of the picture the guy has a typical looking equipiment rack with shelving and a motherboard on each shelf. Nothing special really, and it doesn't look all that different then other racks I've seen by members of our own folding team, with the exception of all of the GTX295s of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19-inch_rack

My question is this: Did he somehow rig it so that all these machines are operating under one operating system? Or are we talking 23 differen OS setups?

And if he did rig it all under one OS... then how did he do it? And if he didn't... when what kind of switch would let him switch from 23 different computers. I've run plenty of servers in my day... but something about this setup is confusing me... I mean I never ran servers for the NSA or Argonne national laboratories or anything like that...

[MARCI]

Actually Atlas posted a couple of replies to a similar thread about his farm a few weeks ago. He has personal and family reasons he's such a dedicated folder. I'd still love to recruit him for T32

[ratbuddy]

My question is this: Did he somehow rig it so that all these machines are operating under one operating system? Or are we talking 23 differen OS setups?

And if he did rig it all under one OS... then how did he do it? And if he didn't... when what kind of switch would let him switch from 23 different computers. I've run plenty of servers in my day... but something about this setup is confusing me... I mean I never ran servers for the NSA or Argonne national laboratories or anything like that...

What? It's just a rack holding several motherboards on trays, each of which is it's own computer and contains several video cards. Very similar to an audio rack really. Follow the link you posted and you can read about exactly how he did it.

[rainless]

What? It's just a rack holding several motherboards on trays, each of which is it's own computer and contains several video cards. Very similar to an audio rack really. Follow the link you posted and you can read about exactly how he did it.

Cool thanks.

[theELVISCERATOR]

Folding leads to global warming you would THINK.


CHEEZE!

[BoT]

cluster or grid computing would allow him to run a single os on all machines. most likely it would be unix or linux thou. also, he wouldn't need a kvm to access all the machines, once they setup and running he could just rdp into it, no peri's at all

[Mr.Guvernment]

As some said they dont fold for MPC!!!!!!!!!

[Mr.Guvernment]

it is not really a "single server" it is multiple rigs on a large case.

if if some could of read the article,this is why they do it


Farqué's father suffers from Huntington's Disease

[rainless]

As some said they dont fold for MPC!!!!!!!!!

it is not really a "single server" it is multiple rigs on a large case.

if if some could of read the article,this is why they do it

What is with you and the double post? Allllllllllways with the double post...