What is it?

It is a new distributed supercomputing infrastructure made of many individual PlayStation3 and NVIDIA graphics cards joined together to deliver high-performance full-atom biomolecular simulations. This project gives a new powerful computational tool to scientists and you are an important part of it.

If you enjoy science, you can participate by donating the computing time of your PlayStation3 or your NVIDIA graphics card to scientific research by running molecular simulations while not playing. Simply follow the instructions below to join, get your credits for the results you return, join a team, meet and exchange experience with other paritcipants with the forums.

Join with your Playstation3

• Read our rules and policies
• Download and install the PS3GRID LIVE usb pen drive for the PlayStation 3
• That's all. You are already volunteering your PS3.

Join with your Nvidia graphics card (beta)

• Read our rules and policies
• Install FROM HERE the latest Nvidia CUDA graphics driver.
  (Check compatible Nvidia graphics cards, recommended at least 50 stream processors).
• For Linux x64, download and install the GPU-enabled BOINC client.
• When prompted, enter http://www.ps3grid.net/

Why should you join?

The computational power of graphics hardware is much higher than standard processor due to the large amount of calculations which are required to display realistic three-dimensional images.

This is achieved by a design and programming style change (see CUDA). A conventional processor dedicates a relatively large fraction of its transistors to complex control logic, to maximise performance of a serial code. The Cell processor contains 8 fast Synergetic Processing Elements (SPEs) designed to maximise arithmetic throughput. Graphical processing units (GPUs) devices have a very large number of slower cores maximizing parallel throughput.

For example, just ten thousand volunteers provides the computational power of the largest supercomputer on the planet for certain specific applications.

Science: Molecular experiments

For more information or if you need to contact us write to Gianni De Fabritiis (ps3grid@gmail.com). Also, visit our lab home page MultiscaleLab. We are located in the Computational Biochemistry and Biophysics Laboratory , Research Unit on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) at University of Pompeu Fabra, within the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB).

Molecular simulations of Triose Phospate Isomerase (TPI) enzymes

This workunit investigates the conformational differences that arise when TPI enzymes undergo tyrosine nitration as a consequence of inflammation, defective mithocondrial respiration and oxydative stress. Workunits last around one day and must completed before 4 days.

FORWARD-REVERSE STEERED MOLECULAR DYNAMICS

Potassium ion permeation in Gramicidin A

We are giving workunits comprising full-atom simulations of gramidicin A for ion transport, a total of 30,000 atoms. Each workunit lasts less than one day and you have to complete it before 4 days. Movie.

News

August 20, 2008 GPU BOINC update
ALL LINUX users of the GPU application should update to boinc version 6.3.8. Link available from www.gpugrid.net.

August 5, 2008 New article in press
The impact of accelerator processors for high-throughput molecular modeling and simulation, in press Drug Discovery Today (2008).

July 17, 2008 Launch of GPUGRID.net, BOINC on GPUs
Finally GPU computing on BOINC! After delivering BOINC on Playstation last year, we are happy to announce that from today we are are able to distribute workunits on Nvidia GPUs. PS3grid.net and the new website GPUGRID.net go along to create a large infrastructure for biomolecular simulations. To run GPU workunits simply follow the instructions on the website. Apart from us, this was made possible by a strong collaboration with BOINC developers and in particular David Anderson at Berkeley and Stefan and Keith from the BOINC community, already moderators at ps3grid. We also want to thank Nvidia for their important support.

...more news

News is available as an RSS feed .

Quick links

Welcome to distributed computing on accelerated hardware

Forum and Help Desk

Your account - view stats, modify preferences

Create your project account

Research jobs at multiscale lab

About us

User of the day

[AF>Ouest>Quebec]sbmtl
I am member of L\'Alliance Francophone. 37 year\'s old. Working in an University Health Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Helping to defeat...

Returning participants

• Teams - create or join a team
• Applications
• Select language
• Server status

Project totals and leader boards

• Top participants
• Top computers
• Top teams
• Other statistics
• Participant profiles

PUBLICATIONS

G. Giupponi, M. Harvey and G. De Fabritiis, The impact of accelerator processors for high-throughput molecular modeling and simulation, in press Drug Discovery Today (2008).

G. De Fabritiis, P. Coveney and J. Villa-Freixa, Energetics of K+ permeability through Gramicidin A by forward-reverse steered molecular dynamics ,in press Proteins (2008).

M. Harvey, G. Giupponi, J. Villa-Freixa and G. De Fabritiis, PS3GRID.NET: Building a distributed supercomputer using the PlayStation 3, Distributed & Grid Computing - Science Made Transparent for Everyone. Principles, Applications and Supporting Communities (2007).

PS3GRID.NET: A distributed computing environment for molecular simulations on the PlayStation 3, presentation at the international symposium of biomedical informatics, 26-27 June Barcelona (2007).

G. De Fabritiis, Performance of the Cell processor for biomolecular simulations, Comp. Phys. Commun. 176, 660 (2007).