Suggestion to donors: donate instead of buying hardware

[Jonazz]

I have a suggestion for some of the top folders out here. Instead of buying an extra, dedicated PC to run Folding@Home, why not donate that amount of money (or a part of it and buy a weaker PC) to the project?

Folding@Home as a whole will probably benefit more from some donations than the science your exta PC will do. The only disadvantage is that you won't gain any points, but maybe a system can be created that converts donated dollar in points.

[mdk777]

I'm not sure the project has any pressing cash shortages that need addressing.

At some point in the future, cloud computing would perhaps yield a more efficient conversion of dollars to compute results than buying dedicated personal hardware.
However, I'm not sure anyone has run the numbers on this yet.

Any HP accounts finding it still pays to rent rather than own?

[Jonazz]

Obviously there are no shortages, but more funds could never hurt

They'll have more money for coding, donor suggestions, maybe even some form of promotion?

[DoctorsSon]

I'd rather buy new equipment and donate my money to the electric company.
I doubt that F@H is hurting for money, I suspect they would rather have the work coming in faster than it is now.

[jimerickson]

hardware -- more is better.

[7im]

Obviously there are no shortages...

No cash shortages? Are you kidding?! FAH is always scraping for more cash. Their hard drive needs alone could buy one of the smaller European countries.

[Jonazz]

So why doesn't Stanford help Greece out?

Really, I'm sure FAH is doing fine with the resources they have. But I'm also 100 % sure there are some less important things the Pande Group would love to implement, but they are unable to because they don't have enough money. Even small donations can help.

[7im]

I'd like to know how you are so sure that FAH is doing fine with their resources...

In a time where research grants are at an all time low, and government austerity at an all time high, the funding for FAH is thin at best.

For example, you'll notice the NIH logo on the FAH home page, but yet the NIH grants are at an all time low... http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... grant.html

Although NIH received a modest 0.8% increase in 2012, the agency appears to be girding for a period of austerity. A notice today states that continuing grants will get no inflationary increase in 2012 and new awards will not receive inflationary increases in future years.

[Jonazz]

Wow, I had no idea! This reinforces my idea even more!

Sigh, I know goverments are on the cut worldwide, I believe it is necesarry, but it really sucks that researchers are suffering from this as well.

[k1wi]

I have to say, I do see the OP as raising an interesting and valid point that at some stage, donating cash may be more beneficial than purchasing [additional] hardware (over and above what you would purchase for everyday use) and paying the ongoing operating costs. Indeed, with the improvements to the energy efficiency of computers when idling and power prices generally increasing faster than inflation, I can only see it becoming more so, to the point where it could be more cost effective to idle your computer and donate than to run it flat out.

I think it has two separate aspects - donations for the running of FAH and donations for the funding of actual folding machines. In the case of the former, I suspect it would depend on whether the scientific goals of F@H were more constrained by 'operating' costs, or by the amount of folding being done by the community.

For the latter, I see it as a straight substitution. I.e. whether the performance of $1000 of folder computer & energy is >=< than $1000 of F@H operated computer & energy. For one thing, donations to F@H are tax deductable, whereas purchasing personal machines are not (there maybe some exceptions around companies etc). I imagine F@H, as part of an organisation that purchases/leases a great deal of computing resources potentially has access to deeper discounts on hardware than regular folders. This could skew the equation towards donating for hardware, at least for computers over and above those used for everyday folding. As computer idle efficiency improved this could be further skewed (if a modern GPU consumes less than a watt while idling, then the operating costs associated with running it at 100% constantly may greatly offset any sunk costs) especially as the cost of new hardware falls (reducing sunk costs) and more portable devices are favoured*.

I suspect where it would balance out is whether they have to purchase enterprise-level/quality hardware, or whether they are able to purchase consumer grade hardware. A further limitation would be the time factor - maintaining racks of user funded folding rigs would require human resources that, when run by the community, are provided by the individual. I am sure there are many other examples of reduced 'efficiency', such as the non-monetary benefit folders get from playing with their fancy computers - as illustrated by DoctorsSon

How energy efficiency gains due to process shrinks or transistor design influences the 'cost' effectiveness of whether to idle everyday hardware & donate or fold I am unsure - perhaps if the energy efficiency improves faster than power prices and the energy consumption delta between idle/100%.

I would suggest that if idle & donate becomes more 'cost' effective than donating computer resource time then the validity of the distributed computing model would be up for debate.

The dollars for points is an interesting idea - pool a number of users to purchase a more powerful computer than they would, on their own, purchase and leverage the QRB for higher ppd per user from it... However, the difficulty with such a proposal is that over time the 'subscribed' computer will decrease in cost effectiveness and maintaining such a system would be ongoing recalculation - how would you fund ongoing costs while removing the 'ability' for folders to cut and run once more efficient computers are available?

Any HP accounts finding it still pays to rent rather than own?

Is anyone actually running HPcloud since the Free public beta ended?

*Computer users moving away from $1000 PCs to $600 tablets is a 'risk' to the current growth of the F@H model.

/End my lengthy opinion piece

[Jesse_V]

Some things I'd like to note:
1) The PG, as a non-profit organization, wouldn't make any money off of a donation. AFAIK, all the money would go towards things like paying for existing servers and buying new ones, purchasing all the hard drives and backup systems for the hundreds of terabytes of data F@h generates, (see also Storage@home) and probably paying for software development as well. The money is needed and drives the project forward, just as CPUs/GPUs/PS3s do.
2) The folding.stanford.edu page encourages us to donate computing power to the project as the best thing we can do. I think everyone agree with this, but it's not exactly the same since the OP was talking about additional hardware.

My view: I've only added additional hardware once, and I had other reasons for doing that besides F@h, but it was worth it in the end all around I think. I believe there exists a point that it would be better to donate a certain quantity to the PG than to buy new hardware. (considering the performance of a Pentium 4, is it better to send that money to the PG, or to buy the processor instead? How about a top-of-the-line CPU?) Without any numbers, real facts, or official statements to go by, it's all personal choice and thus at this point any statement in general would be based on entirely speculative grounds. I have a feeling that the scales tip in the direction of new hardware, but that's my opinion.

[7im]

Topics already well discussed, like folding in Arizona vs. Alberta, also play in to that donate or download equation.

[Christopher N. Lewis]

Where's the fun in simply donating money? I'd much rather spend it on my own hardware.

[PantherX]

...

Any HP accounts finding it still pays to rent rather than own?

Is anyone actually running HPcloud since the Free public beta ended?...

Not that I know off but here's a link to the AWS -> viewtopic.php?f=67&t=21603

[7im]

Where's the fun in simply donating money? I'd much rather spend it on my own hardware.

The original poster isn't saying everyone should donate cash. But this is one of many ways to donate, and it probably doesn't get enough visibility.

It's also a great option when many employers will match your contribution 1 to 1. Then that match raises visibility within the company, and so on...