Posts by Contrablue

1) Questions and Answers : Windows : 64bit application for AMD64 processors? (Message 52713) Posted 25 Apr 2008 by Contrablue Post: It is likely that performance improvements of between 15% and 30% will be achieved when Rosetta is optimized for x64. Such improvements were observed in a variety of mathematical and graphical applications tested a few years ago, when the AMD64 architecture was first introduced. In my own recent testing, using the Mathematica 5.2 benchmark, "64 bitness" accounted for a 15% improvement in performance. Performance increases of 15% - 30%, which are significant on a workstation, become far more important when multiplied by the thousands of computers running Rosetta, and which are capable of 64-bit computation. These improvements can reduce the time to solve minimum energy conformations of proteins by many machine-years and even calendar-years right now. A 64-bit Rosetta therefore would help us: * achieve disease cures significantly faster * increase the efficiency of the massive grid computations involved in running Rosetta to a large degree, thus saving considerable electric power and operational costs * reduce computer wear and tear per unit of Rosetta work produced, again by a very significant amount in the aggregate. For a given amount of computation, thousands fewer computers would be worn out and discarded, reducing both capital costs and toxic waste streams. It is clear that production of a 64-bit version of Rosetta is not just a wish-list item, but a critical requirement for the future. Rosetta developers are urged not to view the costs of grid computation resources as externalities that can be disregarded, and to accordingly expedite delivery of 64-bit versions of Rosetta. --Contrablue