Playstation 3 update 4.30 will remove FAH support

Started by bommel, October 22, 2012, 04:07:10 AM

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bommel

Sony has announced that they will remove support for Folding@home from the Playstation 3 with the upcoming update 4.30. If you want to continue folding with your PS3 you will have to delay the installation of the update as long as possible. As the PS3 doesn't earn much points anyway (and depending on the model has a rather bad points per Watt ratio), I would recommend using another client (PC, GPU).

Tìtstewan


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bommel

Even my Atom D510 (2 cores at 1.6 GHz + HT = 4 threads ) does more PPD with SMP than the PS3 did - and consumes half the power of the current model. Using a console for a distributed computing project was something completely new and maybe they do it again with the PS4. From hearsay I know that the Cell CPU is quite complicated to program efficiently and it is much different than "normal" CPUs like the one in your PC. I can imagine that the guys at Stanford try to focus on the more common architectures (GPU/PC) now.

Tìtstewan

The Cell architecture is not really complicated. It based on the 64-bit PowerPC architecture, and this is based on a simple RISC architecture.
Now, why folding@home not use the console efficiency? If we ask ourselves where these processors are used, you will notice that they are available on the consumer market only in the console. The rest you will find in company servers.
Or in other words:
These processors are not as widespread as CISC processors and therefore not really worth it, especially for PowerPC f@h to provide further support.
A console is to play there, not to work.

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bommel

That's what I meant by trying to focus on the more common architecture. And folding on PS3 helped them to work on the Alzheimer's drug so it was for a good cause :)

Tìtstewan

Yes, it was good, but the consoles are currently not just competitive in in terms of efficiency. Your example with the Intel Atom system shows it clearly.
Sony has arguably decided to "back"-develop the console. First they took the Linux support and now the f@h support...

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