Folding@Home Client's Performance Impact Measured 253
EconolineCrush writes "Trying to convince your boss to let you run Stanford's Folding@Home client on the machines at work? Here's an article that measures the performance impact of running the Folding@Home client that might help. The article examines the client's impact on the performance of business applications, games, workstation applications, and more. When set up correctly, the Folding@Home client can be run transparently in the background with only a negligible impact on system performance, which means your boss has one less reason to turn you down."
And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2, Funny)
probually not, but it might be able to confuse him enough so you can convince him of something else
I mean look at all those numbers and graphs!
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, so I don't really believe the last one because it seems that most buildings have such variation in number of computers and people moving through etc. But that doesn't stop the other two for being equally accurate.
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2, Informative)
[I'm a mechanical engineer and have done some airconditioning design work]
Actually, computers can have a significant effect on air-conditioning services of buildings, particularly large computer labs which are in constant use (ie. computers are pumping out heat continually). I would not be at all surprised to find out that the running cost of airconditioning for a building would increase as a result of significantly more computers (or, as in this case, the computers pumping out significantly more heat).
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2)
I used to leave my computer on 24/7 before I bought a hardware gateway for my roommates to share net access. If I left my bedroom door open at night, it was fine, but if I had closed it, I'd wake up and notice my room is abnormally warm.
Since I've been leaving the computer off lately (using the nifty Hibernate feature), my room stays about the same temperature whether the door is open or closed..
And that's just one PC. I recently purchased a kill-a-watt device. I think I will give it a run and see the power consumption difference when I'm running a number-crunching background program vs a regular idle... I'll post results if I remember (feel free to nag me if I don't) =)
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2)
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2)
How about the cost of processors dying because modern CPUs/cooling systems are not designed to run under full load full-time. We've had nasty problems with Athlons running these kinds of apps.
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2)
Exactly... (Score:4, Insightful)
...but it might help you get to the truth about why you're not being allowed to do it.
We all know that the vast majority of CPU cycles are wasted. If your boss is telling you that you can't do it because of the impact on the workstation, they're most likely lying to you. Most bosses either
Of course, addressing these issues with your boss is far from easy, but if proving to them that workstation performance is not the issue forces them to raise the real issue then at least you have a chance.
Re:Exactly... (Score:2)
Re:Exactly... (Score:2)
Except the cycles aren't being "wasted" - they're just not happening.
Well, now, that depends on what I meant by "wasted", doesn't it. IMO, they're wasted if they're doing nothing ;).
If they're really worried about the electricity cost of running those extra cycles, let them tell you that so you can fully realize that your boss is telling you not to do something you're interested in so the company can save under $50/year [anu.edu.au]. And though they might not be swayed by the worthy cause, they should be swayed by inexpensive ways to keep their employees happy, since happy employees are more likely to be productive and more than make up for that cost with increased productivity and improved retention.
Re:Exactly... (Score:2)
$50 a year? Ouch. At a conservative estimate that would be well over $1M for our firm if everyone ran it.
As it happens my management haven't made any specific ruling about such things, but they do have a general "don't run anything you installed yourself" get out clause. Of course for most stuff that's ignored, but it's always there if they need to fire me for something
Re:Exactly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Exactly... (Score:2)
Of course they're considering the risks, that's part of their job. But there are potential gains. Namely, morale. And there are ways to maintain IT worker morale even without permitting potentially hazardous applications on the network. Namely, telling the truth. Why? because it shows that you're being treated as an adult and builds trust between management and those being managed.
Remember, the purpose of the article was to show that folding@home has a negligible impact on the performance of the workstation for other applications. If this is the reason you were given for not being allowed to place the application on company workstations then your boss either doesn't understand the way these applications work or doesn't trust you with the truth. By refuting the reason given, you at least get to find out which it is.
Re:Exactly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should bosses have to justify declining a request like this to employees ? Considering that:
Aren't the above reasons good enough reasons why employees shouldn't be feeding their hobby and pet interests while being paid ? Even if all the above except 5) were wrong, isn't 5) enough that bosses shouldn't have to worry about justifying their decisions to people who are being paid to work on other projects ?
Re:Exactly... (Score:2)
You're right. Bosses don't have to justify anything. But if you want to know why, IMO, it's in their best interest to treat their workers like adults (i.e. play it straight with them and trust them unless shown that they cannot be trusted) and even let them indulge their interests as long as the costs are not too high, please read my responses to the other three replies to my post.
Re:Exactly... (Score:2)
To quote from my original post:
are afraid they'll get reamed if this stuff causes, or is blamed for causing, any problem with company IS resources
So, yes, I understand that bosses engage in risk management, sometimes to an unenlightened degree. That's fine. That's part of their job (except for the unenlightened part ;) ).
However, allowing this sort of thing is most assuredly not an utter waste of time. It can help build morale and trust in the work environment; something that is very often lacking in IT shops. At the very least, telling the truth about why it's not allowed (remember, the thrust of the article was to disprove the perception that other workstation apps suffer if folding@home is running) is to be expected if the manager even hopes to generate loyalty and trust in return.
So, no, I haven't forgotten anything about how most bosses operate. It's just that I've worked for a couple of good ones (i.e. ones that trust that you're intelligent enough to grasp company priorities and decision-making processes and so refrain from feeding you insulting BS) and and now expect nothing less from them all.
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2)
Exactly, even if the article is technically sound, factual, and clear. Management doesn't work on these principles. :-)
Seriously though, I cannot even run Linux on my desktop, because it is not "company approved software". I work for a big company, can you tell? When I even hint at anything Linux or Open Source, I get an immediate brick wall. No matter how logical or technically fantastic a solution, if it ain't "company approved", it ain't happening.
Re:And if your boss wouldn't let you do it before. (Score:2)
Your boss has EVERY reason to turn you down (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your boss has EVERY reason to turn you down (Score:2, Interesting)
Your boss has EVERY *right* to turn you down. He has NO *reason*.
Oh, he has many reasons. While I like the idea, if it were up to me, they would not run at my company. Why? Well, you see you maintain a standard infrastructure, right down to the desktop. With 20,000 desktops that is quite a bit of work! To minimize the costs and lower the TCO we package applications and deploy them to the workstation. And since we have government regulations we have to meet, we test applications against each other. Small applications may not seem like much, but the unknown factor of such applications, in some environments, can cause conflicts that were not detected before, and worse, it could lead to data corruption. Even the possibility of corrupted data can cost our company billions of dollars. Sometimes you just need to know the difference between work and home and leave it at that. Will I run it at home? I don't know. I'll see how it runs with Seti@homeanother similar program (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't protein folding have some sort of similarity in finding a cure for cancer?
Re:another similar program (Score:2, Informative)
Re:another similar program (Score:2)
Don't take it personally. There's a lot of dumbasses out there think Win2k (and naturally Win2k Server) is unstable. Linux Zealots can be misinformed too.
He does have a point about stability in regards to running untrusted software on a server. The thing to remember is: "It's only a problem when it's a problem. "
Just make sure that if a problem does arise, that's the first thing you get rid of and rule out.
Re:does it count toward the monthly subscription? (Score:2)
But I prefer to download 2 gigs+ of extra pr0n than searching for Mulders sexual Partner....!
Re:another similar program (Score:3, Informative)
Re:another similar program (Score:2)
Cell signalling has everything to do with tertiary protein structures and everything to do with controlling the life cycles of cells - i.e. finding new (or more specific/effective) approaches to - for example - cancer therapy.
Drug specificity is gained through precise drug-receptor interactions. Receptors are proteins. The more exactly you know the receptor structure, the more specifically you can design your drug. Being able to predict different tertiary protein structures (foldings) from only the known DNA sequence mutations can only be A Good Thing, and having a crapload of computers around the world doing part of the job for free is nice.
Though I'm not gonna participate unless I get royalties from any patents/drugs that may come out of all this...
Re:another similar program (Score:2)
But that's currently impossible, and it's doubtful when, if ever, doing this on computer will ever replace crystallography- especially given the pace at which crystallography improves. Folding@Home isn't even trying to do what you're talking aobut. They're investigating the dynamics of protein folding using a small peptide system. They already know the tertiary structure. Some groups have gotten good results in de novo simulations of protein folding, but nothing remotely near what you'd need to do computational drug design. You need high-res crystal structures for that.
There are some groups that are doing drug-receptor studies using known structures (also with distributed computing; see this [childhooddiseases.org] for example). I don't know how accurate these will be, but there's a sounder baseisfor it than trying to do this from sequence info alone.
I'm not sure what you mean by... (Score:3, Informative)
a quick bio summary:
There are about 35,000 genes in the human genome, which means there are >35,000 different kinds of proteins in our bodies over our lifetime. Each of these proteins has a 3-dimensional structure that is nearly impossible to predict from genetic information alone. The 3-dimensional structure of a protein, along with its composition, determines the functionality of the protein. Determining the 3D structure of a protein and discovering the steps necessary for a peptide chain to wriggle up into a mature protein is called the "Protein Folding Problem"
In many kinds of Cancer, genetic mutations have occurred that cause either a problem with the way a protein folds up and thus changed its functionality; or a mutation has occurred such that the genetic instructions have changed, causing some proteins to be made more or less often than usual. Usually what happens is a whole lot of things get changed before cancer is diagnosed.
It Would Be Nice If... (Score:5, Informative)
I ran their Linux client on a couple machines and it ran ok, didn't impact things too badly (remember "nice"?). But when it went to upload the finished results, it could never connect to the server that takes the finished data.
After two weeks of that, I pulled the client down. No one bothered to respond to my email, one person pointed to a discussion group for assistance, but since I'm already being overly generous with my time, it was more bother than it was worth.
Re:It Would Be Nice If...[solution] (Score:4, Informative)
http://forum.folding-community.org/
Re:It Would Be Nice If... (Score:2)
Re:It Would Be Nice If... (Score:2)
Quite a shame, as I have quite a few machines here and pretty much free reigh over installing whatever I want on my machines...
I might consider trying one of those SocksCap/HTTP Tunnelling systems someday if I get the energy... For now, I'm just keeping my seti@home going, which it always has done without me ever needing to do much more than enter my email address...
If you want a largest volunteer base from number crunching clients, I suggest keeping your software as versatile and compatible as possible, and make it smart enough to self-discover solutions to problems by itself... Something so simple as using HTTP to transfer work packets seems obvious to me...
Hello... (Score:2, Funny)
Whats that? Oh, no, it doesn't have anything to do with work.
Yes, it will have an adverse effect on the network performance but this web site I read claims it won't be all that bad.
Oh really? I should get the fuck back to work and quit fucking around with bullshit worthless personal stuff on company time or you'll fire the shit out of me?
Yes, thank you sir, back to work sir.
Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:5, Insightful)
What many businesses do not accept is the security and liability implications of running outside, unapproved code on their machines, expecially production boxen. "Who supports it when it crashes?", "What assurance do we have that it's not a trojan, gathering data?", "Why should we pay for their IT needs?" - these are just a few of the questions that a reasonably intellegent IT manager should/would be asking.
Of course, after all that, there's still the argument that "They're our machines, not yours. That's why." There's no easy way to answer that one and win.
Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:2, Insightful)
Folding@Home can be used for advertisement purposes. Start a team for your company, including a link to your webpage. Just something that'll help a company get noticed. I've checked out links for random teams myself.
Having said that, I used to run F@H on my boxes at home, and one of my processors eventually failed, so I don't run it anymore, especially not at work.
Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. Particularly with larger corporate purchases, some buys calculate energy usage based on 9-10 hours a day on, and the remainder on low-power mode, and use that in their decision making.
Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:2)
Maybe where you work, but now where I work. We power donw every night. of course this is an NT network, so there's not that much chance of it staying up 24/7 anyway
Wonder how much energy is wasted each year in the US by machines being left on all the time? More proof that *nix is destroying our planet!!
Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've hooked an ammeter to the AC power cord on my Athlon system. It sucks down about 20 more watts when the CPU is under load than when it is idle. It makes sense that you would use more power when the logic units, memory cells and bus signals are doing more work.
OTOH, nobody ever seems to care when most of the employees leave their big hot CRTs turned 24x7. Each of these is wasting 50 to 100W of power. Look at most any office building at night; you can see all of the monitors that people are too lazy to flip off.
Turning off monitors (Score:2)
Making a fuss and planting trees on the weekend is great, you should also carry that presence of mind into your everyday actions.
Turn off your monitor when you leave for the day.
Don't not running hot water if you're not using it.
Thinking twice about having ten old computers on 24x7 in your house. It might be cool, but maybe DNS doesn't need it's own server (whoa, really?). Two one 24x7 is probably more than enough, unless you have some special need.
Sure there may be exceptions to these things -- that's fine. Just be conscious of your actions. Decide to leave the monitor on, don't just be lazy about it. (same thing goes for speeding, yelling at people, getting drunk, etc. They may or may not be bad, but decide to do them -- don't just fall into it.)
Maybe I'm some Berkeley nut-case, but usually when I leave work at night, I go by and turn off all of the monitors on my way out. People sometimes talk to me about it and I give them my shpeel, but when they leave the next day, it's more of the same. Is it too much for people to think about these things?
Re:Turning off monitors (Score:2)
Re:Still not a guilt-free process... (Score:2, Interesting)
Seeing your Athlons near operating maximums all the time has got to wear on the equipment. I started seeing instabilities with RAM (which I had to replace at a cost of a few hundred dollars).
When the Processor is idle most of the time the system runs significantly cooler.
Brian Macy
Laptop batteries don't like these things (Score:2)
However, if your computer is a laptop that you run on batteries for a significant fraction of the time, be careful - NiMH batteries really don't like to power CPU-burners, and as they age, they tend to fail in ugly ways. I used to have a one-hour train commute, and my laptop simply did *not* like running GIMPS. Also, even if I turned it off when I was running on batteries, it slowed down the recharge process significantly when I plugged back in again, and I don't think it liked that either.
Usefull? (Score:2, Informative)
Its pretty common knowledge that running IDLE Tasks consume nearly no CPU time. Of course the overall performance will be SLIGHTLY lower because of context switching and the time it takes for the idle process to finish its time slice (no it wont preempt after 1 op or something - will do a few usecs of processing till the OS notices something else has to be done)...
The real question, which hasnt been answered on that article is how much network bandwith does it consume? I'm running folding@home on a few machines [stanford.edu] here [einsurance.de] but never really had the time to check how much of our network bandwith its taking away...
Hopefully not that much
ps.: awake for 32 hours, this posting might not make sense at all
Re:Usefull? (Score:2)
If you're not using your computers, it doesn't matter, now, does it? None of the programs (folding, distributed, that awful eccp client) would use as much as a guy surfing on the net, except maybe seti, and even that is just bursting, not continuous. Most of them seem to use shorthand for "uploading" results anyway, the only big use is when they download new info.
Your concern should be power consumption and heat production, probably. Especially if you're using Transmetas or laptops, etc.
Re:Usefull? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes! Some pay per bandwith used, and even if its flat, 100 PC's on a corporate network could generate some neat network traffic too.
I think my UD client downloads ~600k for each Work Unit
Thats not much, but adds up
Re:Usefull? (Score:2)
Good Choice (Score:2, Interesting)
Just maybe.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't get permission the first time around, repeated pestering will not help your case.
Performance impacts are negligable.. (Score:4, Interesting)
While 1 CPU running at full throttle 24/7 isn't going to make that big of a jump in the power bill. 500 CPUs... 1000, etc... will create a huge increase in power consumption over a long enough time frame.
I fully support distributed projects like Folding@home, SETI, etc... and run them on my machines, both at home and at work, but the power consumption is a legitimate concern.
I believe someone did a (unprofessional) investigation of the SETI@home debacle when it first came out, and came to the conclusion that something on the order of 100 or 1000 barrels of oil per day were wasted on checking over the same data repeatedly
Regardless
Re:Performance impacts are negligable.. (Score:2)
Factor in power usage (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, that's the biggest deterrant from using it. I had been running the UnitedDevices client on my home computer. Since my computer ran all the time, I figured what the heck. But lately I've been trying to cut back on my power consumption. By leaving the UD client running 24/7, its like leaving an extra light bulb on, power wise.
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
Well, some of us need to heat up our homes with electricity, at least during the winter. And your CPU is obsolete long before it dies.
Todays CPUs are obsolete before the warranty expires anyway. :)
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
Obsolete != useless.
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
CPU's are "obselete" before you get them home from the computer store. Side note: Don't buy the latest and greatest computer for regular use. It's a waste of money.
Most businesses buy "average" computer systems. They aren't designed to withstand being run 24/7 at max load. All the large scale businesses will usually replace their systems every 3 years. But small and many medium sized companies will not replace systems unless absolutely required. My dad runs a company of about 10 employee's. Everybody either has a computer or a terminal hooked up to a mini. I don't think he's bought a "new" PC for his office in the last 5 to 10 years. What he has does what he needs. He buys refurbished computers if he needs to add on. Not only is that good business sense, but its also good environmentally speaking.
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
It seems to me that alternating between 0% and 100% utilization repeatedly would do more damage, since it would cause the greatest differential in temperature, thereby causing the silicon to expand and contract repeatedly, perhaps eventually leading to a weak circuit line to open.
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
You run risk of burning the CPU out, or at least making it flaky. (Assuming its getting too hot)
This is a risk, not a definite issue.
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
1 60 watt light bulb might not be a whole lot, and no it won't break *my bank*, but every little bit helps. As an individual, I'm worried about living more or less "paycheck to paycheck". I could better use that money to through in the bank and save for *my* future. I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T run these clients, and by all means, please continue running them if you so choose.
As for businesses, if a large number of people start running these apps, then the power bill will be signafically bigger than 1 extra light bulb. If the powers that be decide they don't mind spending that extra money for charity, good for them.
Bottom line, don't expect/demand people to run these applications. Once its a demand, it no longer becomes a charitable cause. It becomes socialism.
Re:UPS issues... (Score:2)
On my Windows 2000 box, I know my CPU is consuming more power when I run the client(s) because my CPU temp goes up when I run it, and down when I stop it. I know that windows has a lot more cruft than a Linux box, but overall it won't sit at max power while "idle".
Re:Factor in power usage (Score:2)
Other employer concerns (Score:4, Interesting)
My company is moderately sized (~140 employees) and uses a large amount of bandwidth on a near constant basis. While our data does not need to flow in real time, any disruption in our network can cause quite an uproar directed at the IT department, of which I am a member.
While the data transfers involved with projects like SETI@Home and Folding@Home are small in comparison to our normal traffic, my superiors were concerned that if many connections were made to the central server simultaneously, there would be a noticable drop in performance.
I think this bandwidth issue, and not client performance, stands as the major roadblock to more corporate participantion.
-Shadow
Re:Other employer concerns (Score:2)
Distributed.net have a proxy server [distributed.net] you can run to avoid having squillions of connections being made to some external server. It makes it easy to produce stats for your participating clients too
Re:Other employer concerns (Score:2)
software/application compatibility is the reason (Score:3, Interesting)
we learned this the hard way when we thought installing w2k service pack 2 was a good idea when sp1 was the department standard. one of our in-house apps was crashing at random times and the suits upstairs were starting to ask questions. luckily this didnt come down on us as another problem was the cause of the crash's, and saved us a world of grief
Re:software/application compatibility is the reaso (Score:2, Insightful)
We've had this problem with the GUI coders (VB and .NET monkeys) at our place. The stuff they produce will crash at the slightest provocation (such as being installed on the 'wrong' partition!). They then try to push the blame on to users for having 'non-standard' configurations (like more than one hard-drive). If someone can't write portable, maintainable, reliable, efficent code they should find a job that demands less technical skill - like flipping burgers.
By comparison the seti/folding@home clients are written to be portable (especially folding@home) and have been tested on many thousands of different computers, reliablity at the users end is more indicative of in-house issues.
Re:software/application compatibility is the reaso (Score:2)
Performance impact is the least of your worries (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone really think that the reason these things are being rejected by management is because of performance???
tax break? (Score:4, Interesting)
This would definitely speed up development, and provide an incentive to the companies with massive amounts of unused computers usually left on anyways during the evenings. At least at my work place this is the case.
What's with the politically incorrect map? (Score:3, Funny)
Bring me back the good old Alaska-to-Siberia map.
Re:What's with the politically incorrect map? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheesh, especially for displaying geographic data about the folding clients, Equirectangular [wolfram.com] would be a much better choice, since the calculation for point placement is perfectly linear.
Folding@Home with Google Toolbar (Score:5, Informative)
The MIS guy at least approved their use.
Last week, I saw that the Google Toolbar had self updated, and one of the new features was the ability to opt in for participation in the Folding@Home project through the use of the Google Toolbar.
It appears that at the time this feature is limited to only a select clients. Nevertheless I sent a request to the MIS guy about it, and if I could enable it. He had no issues with it. (Aka run it if you want)
Perhaps if the MIS/IT person already lets you use the Google Toolbar on the Windows machine, then they would probably be more trusting of running Folding@Home through the Google Toolbar.
I haven't noticed any significant slow downs using regular mode, and in any case you can switch between regular and conservative modes. Conservative mode running when you're not using the computer.
Also although I dont have the link at the moment handy (at home on my Mac
Re:Folding@Home with Google Toolbar (Score:2)
What about Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
In Windows, I think there are scheduling classes such that a low priority idle task will not receive any cycles if a normal priority task needs to run.
-Aaron
Whoa. If only I was so lucky... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about memory consumption? Having to hit the swapfile more often because its running would slow down a compile job, or heck, just the apparent responsiveness of the system. If opening a document takes 10 seconds longer because the system has to swap, I'd say that has a far more annoying impact than the miniscule extra CPU resources...
what about wear and tear? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why volunteer distributed computation has been primarily popular among academics, students, and low-wage tech workers; people who aren't financially responsible for the computers to which they have access.
Re:what about wear and tear? (Score:2)
Re:what about wear and tear? (Score:2)
Well, CPU heat, for one thing. Most OSes nowadays send a HALT/HLT or equivalent instruction, when not doing anything, which powers down the CPU and lowers the temperature in doing so.
Sure, it's reaching, but it's also a valid resposne. :-)
You'd run this stuff on a production system? (Score:5, Interesting)
A production system handling multi-million dollar transactions began to slow and crash for absolutely no reason we could fathom. As each degradation of the system was costing the company involved tens of thousands of dollars at a shot, the president and other higher-ups were growing quite irate about the difficulty and wanted it fixed NOW.
A few days of frustrating troubleshooting by a team of techs discovered the problem: Someone had installed SETI@Home on the production system and it was interfering with other operations. Having incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars of opportunity-cost losses in those few days, the 'professional' responsible for that stupidity was thrown out on their ass the instant they were identified as the culprit.
The moral of the story: If you're paid to be a professional, be one. Use business systems for _business_ and if you want to run fun stuff, do it on your own time and on your own dime.
Re:You'd run this stuff on a production system? (Score:2)
I am aware of some scheduler issues with Win2K where even a low priority task isn't kicked out immediately.
I do know of some people who use their spare cycles for in-house work such as financial institutions modeling portfolios. As a sanctioned application it seems to work well and in any case comes in over night.
Folding@home??? (Score:2)
Why I would never let my employees run this (Score:3, Interesting)
Overly anal? No. All it takes is for someone to discover a buffer overrun in the application, create an exploit, and poison our DNS to get data from their site instead of folding@home's site. This is perfectly possible, and should it happen, could be devastating.
I don't care enough about folding@home to risk company security. The CPU cycles we would have spent crunching data for them are not an issue, especially if the cycles would have been wasted anyway. I would gladly spend those if there were no risk.
You're kidding, right? (Score:2)
Except every script kiddie out there who has a different, specific target in mind for a DoS attack. Most people hit by viruses and worms weren't even known to the attacker, let alone the intended target. If all the @home distributed computing projects are important enough to you, fine. If your security is more important, you'd be stupid to run the risk.
Patent rights? (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps someday I won't even be able to afford the drugs that are a result of my CPU cycles. That's not to discourage donating cycles, but it is something to think about.
Re:Patent rights? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your boss doesn't need a reason... (Score:2, Interesting)
Tax deductable (Score:2, Insightful)
IP issues? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IP issues? (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone who doesn't use a cycle-sucker is scum. Think about it - how much power is wasted through PC idle time? How much money does that wasted time cost you, through your power bills? How many people will die today for the want of a few pence to buy some food or water?
Distributed computing helps me sleep at night.
text-only version (Score:2, Interesting)
I prefer it over the text version. Its nice to look at and goes in my taskbar, but sometimes it will prevent 3d apps (games) from runing on my box. It seems to steal the focus from the games.
GF3 on dual p3 900's win2ksp3
Debian Unstable (Score:2, Informative)
Your boss (Score:2)
Simply, us IT folk generally don't want anyone running anything they don't NEED to run on a daily basis on their computer, period, because every additional thing adds complexity.
It's a stability and a security risk.
Why were you hired? (Score:2)
Re:Interesting line in article. (Score:2)
If you're going to install something on Windows as a service, you're the system's administrator. You therefore effectively stop users who are not also administrators from playing with it, stopping it, etc. This would be directed at sysadmins who want to use the idle cycles of the desktop machines they administer, I believe.
Running something in StartUp is going to give you an application running under the logged-in user's context, that disappears when he logs out, and again can be fiddled with by said user.
Re:Why only low priority threads. (Score:3, Informative)
In any modern operating system, a "low priority" thread will happily take 100% of the CPU if nothing else is running. Low priority doesn't mean it hangs on 10% just in case something wants the CPU -- it means that if a high priority and a low priority process both want the CPU, the high priority process is going to get a larger slice.
Re:Why only low priority threads. (Score:2)
HLT (Score:2, Informative)
(does not apply to windows 95/98, they dont HLT at idle. if you're using either of those systems, there are third party programs to HLT at idle time, though, to cool down the cpu.)
Re:It's still stealing (Score:2)
oh wait
Re:Folding@Home on Mac OS X (Score:2)
It uses unused CPU time - it's supposed to occupy CPU cycles that you aren't using.
The fact that it only snags 50% CPU when everything else is turned off means that it must be single threaded - it's only using 1 of your Mac's two processors.
You can't use process viewer to determine how much it is stealing - the real test is to run another higher priority CPU intensive program and see how close Folding@home gets to zero.
Here's a CPU intensive program for your review (I assume you're running OS X).
Re:Folding@Home on Mac OS X (Score:2)
that I wouldn't have used anyway. Folding@Home will ONLY use time that the processor would have otherwise not used at all. Gaah, stupidity.