SETI@HOME - Please develop for PS3

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Viper

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Message 746180 - Posted: 30 Apr 2008, 18:37:06 UTC

Please SETI, can you develop a client for the PS3 which runs from the PS3's firmware, like Folding@Home. The user base will most certainly increase rapidly. Also leaving the PS3 on is more efficient then leaving a PC on.

Please consider this.

Thank you

V Panchal
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Message 746201 - Posted: 30 Apr 2008, 19:23:35 UTC

The SETI@Home team doesn't have enough resources or manpower to make a PS3 application, but there is open invitation by Dr. Eric Korpela asking if anyone is interested in helping out.
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Message 750369 - Posted: 9 May 2008, 10:33:23 UTC

I think it would be a very good solution 4 the seti@home Projekt. It would realy encreace the capability of results extreamly!
Think about it.

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Message 751517 - Posted: 11 May 2008, 18:06:52 UTC

Its already been thought about and we agree. Someone just needs to help make the app.
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Message 751781 - Posted: 12 May 2008, 0:23:33 UTC

I cant wait for seti to go to ps3, I have it currently doing folding at home and it rocks on that. The PS3 will make a huge difference in total number of users crunchin data.
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Message 751784 - Posted: 12 May 2008, 0:26:31 UTC

Someone already did: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=39910

You may want to read the whole thread before deciding on it though.
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Message 755858 - Posted: 20 May 2008, 0:58:07 UTC

This looks interesting - boot to Linux.... Client can't be far off...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how_to/4263321.html?page=1


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Message 756109 - Posted: 20 May 2008, 20:46:12 UTC - in response to Message 755858.  
Last modified: 20 May 2008, 20:49:57 UTC

This looks interesting - boot to Linux.... Client can't be far off...
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how_to/4263321.html?page=1


I too have tried to install Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on my PS3 but it seems that this version isnt working on my EUROPEAN (former 60GB) PS3 :(

Can someone help me to install Ubuntu 8.04 on my PS3 ?

Originally i used a 250 GB HDD, which is now working in my new Laptop, as i cant partition this HDD to use more than 10 GB for BOTH Operating Systems, and i definitly need more than 50 GB for the Game OS of my PS3.

Currently i use a 160 GB HDD, but my PS3 only recognices 149 GB of it ( i asume this is the difference between GiB and GB ! ) and only leaves 122 GB for my PS3 game OS after a fresh formating of the PS3 game OS partition :(
WHICH MEANS THAT SOMETHING IS WASTING AT LEAST 17 GB OF MY 160(-10 for Linux) GB HDD !
Does anyone have similar problems ? Did i catch a ROOTKIT or TROJAN for my PS3 ?

MfG, MEX
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Message 756125 - Posted: 20 May 2008, 21:21:11 UTC - in response to Message 756109.  
Last modified: 20 May 2008, 21:21:41 UTC

WHICH MEANS THAT SOMETHING IS WASTING AT LEAST 17 GB OF MY 160(-10 for Linux) GB HDD !

The file system does this.

A drive may be 160 GB when unformatted, but as soon as you partition and format it, the amount of free space goes down. That file system has to be somewhere...

Plus what you said already, the difference between the drive size being advertized in decimal numbers (GB) and you formatting it into binary numbers (GiB). Giga = 1,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = .93132257 x 160 = 149.

Funny things these computers.
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Message 756474 - Posted: 21 May 2008, 18:11:20 UTC - in response to Message 756125.  

WHICH MEANS THAT SOMETHING IS WASTING AT LEAST 17 GB OF MY 160(-10 for Linux) GB HDD !

The file system does this.

A drive may be 160 GB when unformatted, but as soon as you partition and format it, the amount of free space goes down. That file system has to be somewhere...

Plus what you said already, the difference between the drive size being advertized in decimal numbers (GB) and you formatting it into binary numbers (GiB). Giga = 1,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = .93132257 x 160 = 149.

Funny things these computers.
But needing more than 10% of the available disk-space for the file-system is more than excessive !
I cant believe SONY uses a filesystem which wastes so much !

There has to be some other reason why my new 160GB HDD only had 122(+10)GiB instead of 149GiB after a fresh formating of the PS3 game OS partition ...

MfG, MEX

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Message 756506 - Posted: 21 May 2008, 20:15:06 UTC - in response to Message 756474.  

Plus what you said already, the difference between the drive size being advertized in decimal numbers (GB) and you formatting it into binary numbers (GiB). Giga = 1,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = .93132257 x 160 = 149.
But needing more than 10% of the available disk-space for the file-system is more than excessive !
I cant believe SONY uses a filesystem which wastes so much !

There has to be some other reason why my new 160GB HDD only had 122(+10)GiB instead of 149GiB after a fresh formating of the PS3 game OS partition ...

MfG, MEX


There is no other reason. Jord's second reason is the correct one. Most manufacturers give decimal notation for their hard drive sizes so they sound bigger. Computers, no matter if its a PS3, a Mac or a Windows machine, all operate in binary. If you convert the decimal notation into binary, you get a smaller number. This has nothing to do with the filesystem in use and has everything to do with the way computer were designed.

My 320GB Seagate drive in my computer, once formatted comes out to 298GB in binary. This is not a loss of 22GB but a difference in the way numbers are used (base 10 vs. base 2). Same thing with my Seagate 750GB in my file server, comes out to 698GB formatted capacity. Again, this is 750GB in decimal, so there is no loss of space. Simply two different ways of calculating the same number.


You can read a more detailed explanation of it here (Adobe Acrobat PDF read required).
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Message 756519 - Posted: 21 May 2008, 20:56:14 UTC

The other thing that causes this is the cluster size. A drive used for games only should use larger clusters than the normal 4KB clusters you get from standard format. Of course it depends on what format you formatted the partition(s) in. FAT, FAT32, (NTFS), ext2, ext3, etc.
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Message 759851 - Posted: 28 May 2008, 11:48:33 UTC - in response to Message 756519.  
Last modified: 28 May 2008, 11:53:42 UTC

The other thing that causes this is the cluster size. A drive used for games only should use larger clusters than the normal 4KB clusters you get from standard format. Of course it depends on what format you formatted the partition(s) in. FAT, FAT32, (NTFS), ext2, ext3, etc.
As far as i know, the space needed for a file allocation table, or other means of keeping track of which cluster belongs to which file, is doubled whenever the capacity of a partition exceeds 2^x ... as my 160 GB HDD has 149 GiB - 10 GiB for Linux, it seems that with the remaining 139 GiB for my PS3 game OS partition i am slightly above the limit of 128 GiB and loose as much capacity ( ~17 GiB ) to the FAT as my old 250 GB HDD.

I will test this with a old 32 GiB HDD soon, as the PS3 game OS should only loose 2-5 GiB for the FAT, depending on if the FAT has already been doubled for the range 32-64 GiB, or not for the range 16-32 GiB, ... but for a 40 or 60 GB HDD loosing more than 4 GiB for the FAT is even worse !

MfG, MEX

PS: I didnt format the partition with such a silly small cluster size intentionally !
And i dont know which format SONY uses for their PS3 game OS partition, as i cant even look into the partition table as the PS3 doesnt use a normal MBR :(
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Message 760243 - Posted: 29 May 2008, 12:10:47 UTC - in response to Message 756506.  
Last modified: 29 May 2008, 12:15:20 UTC

But needing more than 10% of the available disk-space for the file-system is more than excessive !
I cant believe SONY uses a filesystem which wastes so much !

There has to be some other reason why my new 160GB HDD only had 122(+10)GiB instead of 149GiB after a fresh formating of the PS3 game OS partition ...

MfG, MEX


There is no other reason. Jord's second reason is the correct one. Most manufacturers give decimal notation for their hard drive sizes so they sound bigger. Computers, no matter if its a PS3, a Mac or a Windows machine, all operate in binary. If you convert the decimal notation into binary, you get a smaller number. This has nothing to do with the filesystem in use and has everything to do with the way computer were designed.

My 320GB Seagate drive in my computer, once formatted comes out to 298GB in binary. This is not a loss of 22GB but a difference in the way numbers are used (base 10 vs. base 2). Same thing with my Seagate 750GB in my file server, comes out to 698GB formatted capacity. Again, this is 750GB in decimal, so there is no loss of space. Simply two different ways of calculating the same number.


You can read a more detailed explanation of it here (Adobe Acrobat PDF read required).
3.3 Operating System Overhead uses a negligible amount of drive space. We
note that operating systems take a portion of drive capacity for use as file tables.
A typical drive utilizes 70MegaBytes for this function, which is not significant on
a drive with a capacity of 120GB. (0.07GB out of a total capacity of 120GB).
Did you actually READ your link before replying ( obviously you didnt read my post to which you were replying ) ?

Accourding to your link 0.07GB are usually used as FAT by a 120GB HDD ... but my 160 GB HDD only had 122 GiB after setting aside 10 GiB for Linux and formating the rest for my PS3 game OS !

As your own 320 GB HDD had a capacity of 298 GiB after formating, my 160 GB HDD should have a capacity of 149 GiB ... this fact is already known to me since CENTURIES, and i didnt complain about it ... but after subtracting 10 GiB for Linux from 149 GiB i should have 139 GiB, while my PS3 told me that it only has 122 free GiB AFTER A FORMATING OF THIS HDD before i restored my backup :rolleyes:

So accourding to your link, my PS3 needs more than 200 times as much space for the FAT than the example in your link ...
3.8 Is a movement underway to clarify the mathematical differences between a
GigaByte (1,000,000,000) and a GigaByte (1,073,741,824)? Yes. The author
has recently heard about a naming convention that will attempt to clarify these
terms, including confusion on kilobytes, etc.
This naming convention is using GiB instead of GB, see [wiki]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#History[/wiki].
In January 1999, the International Electrotechnical Commission introduced the prefixes kibi- (kibibyte), mebi-, gibi-, etc., and the symbols Ki, Mi, Gi, etc. to specify binary multiples of a quantity and eliminate this ambiguity for details .
...
3.9 Extra Credit: What’s the difference between a decimal Terabyte and a binary
Terabyte? Answer: 10004 = 1,000,000,000,000; 10244 = 1,099,511,628,000; a
difference of approximately 10%. And it gets worse with Petabytes: the
difference increases to approximately 12.6%, causing an ever increasing
GigaByte understatement, as long as the math is not understood.
(122+10) GiB / 160 GB = 0.825 ... so i loose a total of 17.5 % instead of less than 7% !

MfG, MEX

PS:
1 KB = 0,9766 KiB ( 2.34% lost )
1 MB = 0,9537 MiB ( 4.63% lost )
1 GB = 0,9313 GiB ( 6.87% lost )
1 TB = 0,9095 TiB ( 9.05% lost )
1 PB = 0,8882 PiB (11.18% lost )
...
? Cant they use a calculator at www.wiebetech.com , or did i make a fault ?
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Message 760268 - Posted: 29 May 2008, 14:38:13 UTC - in response to Message 760243.  
Last modified: 29 May 2008, 14:41:11 UTC

Accourding to your link 0.07GB are usually used as FAT by a 120GB HDD ... but my 160 GB HDD only had 122 GiB after setting aside 10 GiB for Linux and formating the rest for my PS3 game OS !

As your own 320 GB HDD had a capacity of 298 GiB after formating, my 160 GB HDD should have a capacity of 149 GiB ... this fact is already known to me since CENTURIES, and i didnt complain about it ... but after subtracting 10 GiB for Linux from 149 GiB i should have 139 GiB, while my PS3 told me that it only has 122 free GiB AFTER A FORMATING OF THIS HDD before i restored my backup :rolleyes:


Ignoring some of your rude comments (which are really unnecessary), you're forgetting cluster size, as Jord also pointed out. FAT was originally only intended for 2GB maximum, but even Microsoft had a non-standard FAT with Windows NT that allows for partitions up to 4GB.

With a 149GiB hard drive formatted as FAT (or is it FAT32?), clusters sizes must be pretty large. Thus every file on the hard drive is going to take up considerably more space. Are you sure Linux is taking up 10GiB? Which distro are you using? What setup options are you using (i.e. full install, workstation, etc.)? I can only imagine with a FAT partition larger than 140GiB that cluster sizes much be over 1024KiB (64KiB was the maximum allowed even under Microsoft's NT FAT partition). Are you sure Linux isn't taking up more space then usual because of the larger cluster sizes?

If you're unhappy with the answers here, since this is a SETI board, you could always try contacting Sony for support. It is their product after all and I'm sure they could explain it to you much more satisfactorily. It's great that you want to help run SETI on a PS3, but its still an exercise in theory so its technically unsupported as of yet.

A little less rudeness, regardless of level of frustration, goes a long way. If my answer wasn't good enough for you, you could always (oh, I don't know) accept the help graciously and take it for what its worth. Being rude will only ensure less help in the future. You want help? Be kind regardless of the info being offered. I find that the most rude people go away in frustration because others are less willing to help a jerk whereas nice people tend to go away happy because people are willing to go that extra mile for them. Just a little advise for you.
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Message 760581 - Posted: 30 May 2008, 11:02:39 UTC - in response to Message 760268.  
Last modified: 30 May 2008, 11:11:15 UTC

... but after subtracting 10 GiB for Linux from 149 GiB i should have 139 GiB, while my PS3 told me that it only has 122 free GiB AFTER A FORMATING OF THIS HDD before i restored my backup :rolleyes:
With a 149GiB hard drive formatted as FAT (or is it FAT32?), clusters sizes must be pretty large. Thus every file on the hard drive is going to take up considerably more space. Are you sure Linux is taking up 10GiB? Which distro are you using? What setup options are you using (i.e. full install, workstation, etc.)? I can only imagine with a FAT partition larger than 140GiB that cluster sizes much be over 1024KiB (64KiB was the maximum allowed even under Microsoft's NT FAT partition). Are you sure Linux isn't taking up more space then usual because of the larger cluster sizes?
Currently I try to install Ubuntu 8.04 on my PS3 ( in EXPERT mode from a ALTERNATE CD ).
Sadly after installing ~75% Ubuntu tells me now that it didnt find a installable kernel in APT :(

During this unsuccesfull installation, Ubuntu told me that i have a 10.7 GB HDD ( as the hypervisor of the PS only allows Linux to see the part of the HDD which has been set aside for OTHER OS ! ).

This was happening on a 32 GB HDD, which was reported by the XMB of my PS3 as having 26 GB / 31 GB after the first format.
With 10 GB set aside i got 17 GB / 31 GB, and with only 10 GB for the PS3 i got 9083 MB / 31 GB ... after verifiying with this small HDD that i dont have been infected by a ROOTKIT or VIRUS for my PS3, i will now put back my 160 GB HDD into my PS3 and try to install Ubuntu 8.04 again ...

... is there someone who has already succeded in installing Ubuntu 8.04 on a PS3 ?
Where can i get the most up to date ISO images for a fresh installation of Ubuntu 8.04 ( or newer as there are rumors that there wont be a 8.04 for the PS3 ) on a PS3 ?

MfG, MEX
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Message 767996 - Posted: 14 Jun 2008, 13:38:51 UTC

Just a note about the PS3...

The machine only uses the PPC core when running linux, you will not tap into the power of the cell processor.
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Message 768039 - Posted: 14 Jun 2008, 14:48:50 UTC - in response to Message 767996.  

Just a note about the PS3...

The machine only uses the PPC core when running linux, you will not tap into the power of the cell processor.

BOINC cannot yet take advantage of extra processors correctly. This is a planned upgrade.


BOINC WIKI
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Message 768193 - Posted: 14 Jun 2008, 18:25:56 UTC - in response to Message 768039.  

Just a note about the PS3...

The machine only uses the PPC core when running linux, you will not tap into the power of the cell processor.

BOINC cannot yet take advantage of extra processors correctly. This is a planned upgrade.


It's still a waste of time until the linux community can access the RSX through the linux kernel, when that happens then BIONIC could have access to all 7 useable cores.

I'm not trying to insult anybody working on a PS3 client when I say it's a waste of time, it's just that the endeavor(and from what I hear coding for the PS3 is a total PITA) will be pointless once the kernel has access causing the current project to be worthless.

The best solution would be for Sony to build a firmware client like it does for(and with cooperation from) Folding@Home as it is free of the overhead operating systems create, sadly I don't see that happening.

Another thing, the F@H work units for the PS3 are vastly different from the CPU and GPU clients, I'm not sure the code base for the S@H work units would benefit from the PS3.

I hope however that I am proven wrong on all accounts, there is a ton of potential in the PS3.

Thank goD I'm not a programmer.
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Message 769392 - Posted: 17 Jun 2008, 5:26:55 UTC - in response to Message 767996.  

Just a note about the PS3...

The machine only uses the PPC core when running linux, you will not tap into the power of the cell processor.

No. Gauravs application(s) usses the SPEs.
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