Life with PlayStation updated to Version 1.21

Just a note for PS3 folders - Life with PlayStation has received a minor update to Version 1.21.

The update apparently improves 'Network error handling'. No further information was availabe about the update, but any update is good ;)


Source: Official Life with PlayStation site

Attention PS3 folders - Life with PlayStation Update 1.20 released

For all the team members that fold on their PlayStation 3s - There is an update available for the Life with PlayStation software (which contains the Folding@Home Channel).

Version 1.20 adds some cool little features, enabling streaming video playback inside the United Village Channel, photo slideshows support and adds an exclusive Channel for users from the United States - PlayStation Network Game Trailers (lucky buggers).

The PlayStation Network Game Trailers Channel allows you to watch game trailers one after the other continuously, playing back 'gapless'. You can view more information about the games, and even purchase the games without having to leave Life with PlayStation!

If you live outside the US and you're only interested in the Folding@Home Channel, then take advantage of Folding@Home Expert Mode which was included in the 1.10 Update. Instructions: Navigate to [General Settings] -> [Folding@Home Priority] and select [Expert]. Whilst in this mode, no other Channels can be accessed and all available processing power for Life with PlayStation will be directed to the Folding@Home Channel, giving a minor speed boost to the folding process ;)

That's a pretty damn good update. Let us know what ya think by leaving a comment ;)


Sources: TheSixthAxis & Official Life with PlayStation site

New Paper published on the Playstation 3 Folding@Home client

Vijay Pande's blog yet again brings good news with yet another Paper being published, this time about the Playstation 3 Folding@Home client - Accelerating Molecular Dynamic Simulation on the Cell processor and PlayStation 3.

A collaborated effort between the Folding@Home and Sony Development teams, this is the first paper resulting from the Playstation 3's involvement in the Project. The paper is more of a 'how does it work' with details about how the PS3 accelerates simulations through use of it's powerful streaming processor, the CELL Broadband Engine.

The abstract reads:

"Implementation of molecular dynamics (MD) calculations on novel architectures will vastly increase its power to calculate the physical properties of complex systems. Herein, we detail algorithmic advances developed to accelerate MD simulations on the Cell processor, a commodity processor found in PlayStation 3 (PS3). In particular, we discuss issues regarding memory access versus computation and the types of calculations which are best suited for streaming processors such as the Cell, focusing on implicit solvation models. We conclude with a comparison of improved performance on the PS3's Cell processor over more traditional processors."

Papers of this type not only help the Folding@Home team at Stanford, but can potentially help many others outside of the Project. Whether it helps out others involved in the field of Molecular Dynamics, or people that intend to use and program for the CELL processor, knowledge gained can be knowledge shared!

Playstation 3 Folding@Home client wins Japanese Design Award

The Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry has awarded Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) the 'Good Design Gold Award 2008' (otherwise known as the 'G-Mark' award) for its design of the http://folding.stanford.edu/ application for the Playstation 3.

The collaboration of Stanford University (more specifically the Pande Group team) and Sony Computer Entertainment resulted in a Folding@Home client tailored to the PS3 specifications. Optimized specifically to take advantage of the power of the Cell Broadband Engine, the program is the first of it's kind on a games console.

Sighting a highly detailed world map where the location of other users are shown, and with the addition of a detailed protein visualization (powered by the NVIDIA designed RSX GPU), this earned Sony Computer Entertainment and its Folding@Home program the prestigious award which has been given out since 1957 to award outstanding design in industrial and consumer products.

The award jury commented saying:

"Analysis of proteins for the purpose of shedding light on diseases is just one example of solution design for social issues, a stance that indicates the direction that design should take in the future. Motivating the people who will be involved in these studies will be the key to success, but the program functions well as an idea for making participation in this project visible on a global scale."

Masayuki Chatani, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Technology Platform commented on receiving the award on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. saying:

"It is a great honor to receive the ‘Good Design Gold Award’ for our support for the Folding@home project on PS3, Over 1.5 million PS3 users have participated in the Folding@home project and I truly appreciate their contributions for making this project a success. We will continue our efforts in delivering compelling and original services only possible on the PS3 platform."

Congratulations to Sony Computer Entertainment on it's Good Design Gold Award Achievement. They also picked up 'Good Design' Awards for the PlayStation®Network logo and PlayStation®Store user interface design.

Sources:
Kotaku's report & Vijay Pande's Blog
The following is taken from the official Sony press release:

"The “Good Design Award” is Japan’s
only comprehensive design evaluation and commendation system. This system itself
has its origin in the “Good Design Selection System” instituted by the Ministry
of International Trade and Industry in 1957. This year, over 3000 entries were
made and as a result of first and second screening, 1067 items received “Good
Design Award.” Out of 1067 Good Design Award items, 15 entries received “Good
Design Award Best 15,” which includes 1 “Good Design Grand Award” and 14 “Good
Design Gold Award.”"

PS3 Server 171.64.65.83 Reset

Just over half an hour ago I switched on smASHer88_PS3 to successfully download a new work unit - Project 5308 Run 40 Clone 848 Generation 5. Lahm_Family_PS3 then downloaded Project 5308 as well, Run 35 Clone 854 Generation 8.

Reading Vijay Pande's blog, he's told us that they've reset server 171.64.65.83 and that seems to have fixed the PS3 downloading troubles we've been having. I dare say this particular server didn't boot up properly after the scheduled server outage they had a few days ago. There looks to be another scheduled server outage for 171.64.65.XX network on November 5, 7 AM to 8:30 AM PST (2 AM to 3:30 AM, November 6 for us on AEDT) so if ya have some issues then, hopefully it will pass quickly.

PST = Pacific Standard Time = GMT-8
AEDT = Australian Eastern Daylight Time = GMT+11

EDIT: Seemed to be a 3-4 hour period after my two 7hr work units finished where they wouldn't then download another new work unit! However i've turned them back on yet again to download new work units. I seriously hope these troubles are behind us now for the PS3! Haha

PS3 Servers seem to be down

If your PS3 is saying "can't connect to Server" then your not your own. It seems to be another small problem with the servers as many people have reported on the Folding Community Forum. Less than a fortnight ago, PS3 folders experienced the same problem, and it was given a short-term fix.

So hold tight guys, hopefully the Stanford guys are working on fixing this problem as we speak, as it is daytime there now. I'm sure Vijay will give us some official news soon. I have shutdown both my PS3s for now, and will keep checking one of them every now and then and post back when i have success in downloading a new work unit! Haha this doesn't really help our Foldathon, but oh well, gotta keep crunching away best we can!

PS3 work unit downloading issues given short-term fix

If you fold using a PS3, you probably would have noticed just lately, in the last few days or so that your system may have had troubles downloading a new work unit. It seems the servers have been temporarily out of 'jobs' or work units to dish out.

Reading Vijay Pande's blog, Stanford have implemented a short-term fix for the issues, but no comment as to exactly what is wrong.

I had both my PS3s switched off for two days, turning them back on every now and then to see if a new work unit could be downloaded. Last night both PS3s successfully downloaded new work units, one after 1 retry, the other straight away. As far as I can tell, both have been trouble free since. So if you currently have your PS3 down, waiting for these issues to pass, switch her back on, everything should be smooth sailing for now! lol

Folding Setup - Lahm_Family_PS3

As promised this is a snap of my setup for Lahm_Family_PS3. Similar to my other PS3 - smASHer88_PS3, it's a 40GB PAL unit, but it's actually got a different model no. with the serial no. ending in CECHJ02 instead of my existing PS3 which has CECHG02. I'm pretty sure the J models are for those that were part of the Bonus PS3 with Sony Bravia LCD HDTV promotion that happened in July.

Anyways, here's a pic of the PS3 paired up with a Metz Artos 82 MF using Component Video (It's a 'Medium Definition' CRT TV.. no HDMI unfortunately!).

Sony's new 'Life with Playstation' News & Weather Software integrates the latest Folding@Home update

The latest upgrade to the Playstation 3 Folding@Home software will now be integrated into Sony's newly launched 'Life with PlayStation' News and Weather Software.

The new software will function as 'channels', two of which are available at present, one called 'Live' for the News & Weather related side, and of course 'Folding@Home' for viewing the current protein and detailed stats etc. Apparently plans are that new channels of various types will be added down the line.

The good thing about the integration aspect with Folding is that whenever someone uses Life with Playstation they are participating in Folding@Home project at the same time, as the folding process is always going on in the 'background'. So with the current draws of the cool News and Weather Globe, and the likelihood of more channels to be added later, the more participants we can likely add to the project.

If you notice that your folding performance (NS/day) has gone down, its simply because one of the updates has increased the complexity of the folding methods used on the PS3 and are now equal to those used in GPU2. This means better accuracy of scientific results. Folding points have been adjusted so that the PS3 client will still maintain a rough 900~1000 PPD.

Another addition to the folding side of things, is a 'Contribution Points' system (completely separate to the official Stanford stats) where every PS3 folder starts on a clean slate, and gradually builds points as per their contribution efforts. These new points will be linked to the current user's Playstation Network ID (PSN), so lookout for Lahmy88 & Lahm_Family on the leaderboard!

As Vijay Pande has on his blog, here is a video from lead Sony-side developer Noam Rimon explaining the functionality of the new program.

Problems with certain PS3 WUs? Server VSP06 was down

If your PS3 has had trouble returning work units from Projects 4044, 4045 (the big 1,250 pointers) & 4900 (310 points) then it's because a few days ago one of the four PS3 Servers, VSP06 - 171.64.122.73 was down. Vijay Pande had reported the server's downtime on his blog.

Looking at VSP06's log, the server was down between 7:45 PM PDT, Saturday 30 August and 3:10 PM PDT, Sunday 31 August. If your an East Coast Aussie like myself, then the times translate to 12:45 PM AEST, Sunday 31 August to 8:10 AM AEST, Monday 1st September.

So for approximatley 19 & 1/2 hours, the server was out of action, and it meant that if you had one of the above mentioned work units to return, you would've had to have waited for the server to start up again. Nobody should have had any problems receiving new work units however, as your PS3 would still have 3 different servers to download a work unit from.

PDT = Pacific Daylight Time = GMT-7
AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time = GMT+10

Monitor your PS3 carefully!

Just as a warning, apparently a lot of PS3 folders have had troubles with certain work units, and experiencing funny things like title screens locking up, HDD activity taking way too long and more unfortunate results such as work units being lost, or a complete reset to default settings such as what I experienced!

It seems that Dan Ensign from the Pande Group has removed some problem work units saying:

'I'm going to pull projects 4026-4037 until I get a better sense of what's wrong, from our side. Sorry for the inconvenience.'

Watch these two threads (PS3 stalls at zero frames - various WUs & 4033 flatlined?) from the Folding Community Forum to keep updated on the situation.

Got my free Playstation 3! Nice surprise too!

Last week on Wednesday (13th) I received my free Playstation 3 as part of the Sony Bravia Full HD Bonus PS3 in July deal I talked about in my post on the 23rd July - (1k PPD increase due for the team in one month!). I was very glad to see my new PS3 after only 3 weeks since purchasing my new TV, but to top it off Sony actually included a newer DualShock3 instead of the regular SixAxis controller in the box, and also some Video Ezy vouchers! Total champs!

Now to pray that the upcoming 80GB PS3s at the end of the month come with DualShock3s so I can sell this one for a decent price and still end up with the better controller!

Points Milestone - erBotty - 1k

erBotty has passed the 1,000 point milestone! Now sittin with 2,250 points from 5 work units, they sit 393,781st of 1,054,720 folding participants.

I'm a bit slow to report on this one actually, as erBotty passed this mark approximately 2 days ago with a 1,250 point work unit! How do I know this? Well I occasionally checkout the very trusty 3rd party stats provider - Kakao Stats. Specifically I looked up this page - erBotty's Summary and it tells me that they have returned a work unit worth 1,250 points at 22:00~23:00 GMT on the 16th. This is about 8~9AM in GMT+10 Time (What i'm on) on the 17th. So yeh, about two days ago lol.

Just on the 13th, I took a stab at guessing what this team member's folding with (New Team Member - erBotty). Looking at the Project Summary page, I can say now that a Playstation 3 would have to be a correct answer, as there is only two work units which credit 1,250 points, and that is Project 4044 & 4045 which both are PS3 work units.

Congrats to erBotty and hope to get in contact with you soon.

Folding Setup - smASHer88_PS3

Hey guys, just wanted to post a snap of my setup for smASHer88_PS3. Its a 40GB PAL unit, connected to my new Sony Bravia KDL40W4000 Full HDTV. Looks pretty sweet huh? haha

1k PPD increase due for the team in one month!

I just purchased a Sony Bravia KDL40W4000 LCD Full HDTV yesterday and as part of Sony Australia's wonderful July deal, you get a free Playstation 3 via redemption with any Full HD LCD Bravia!

So now i'll most likely have two PS3s folding for Aussie Rules Footy in one month's time which will mean an extra 1,000 ppd (points per day) for the team! Well thats if I keep the PS3 for now. I've had offers to sell it.. which i'll consider because a new 80GB PAL PS3 is coming out August 27th and by time Xmas deals come around, i'm sure i'll be able to pickup an 80GB unit as cheap as what I can sell this coming 40GB unit for.

Anyway we'll see what happens.. but be guaranteed, if I have two PS3s here, i'll have em both folding!