Messages from Prof. Vijay Pande

First WU took about 6 hours. Second is expected to take about the same time. No stats yet regarding the points for this WU, but if it's similar to those I got with the old client then there's no significant gain in performance.

Edit: No wonder it didn't go up. It's a new client but still the same fahcore 11. Strange that GPU utilisation looked higher. Says here "ATI core 16 will be publicly released after the v7 client is released, as the core needs the new client." So I guess I'll have to wait a little longer. I guess my observation about GPU utilisation was just wishful thinking.

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Originally Posted by zachig

Rob...let us know when you try it. I might give v7 beta a try as well ;-)


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

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I still haven't had a chance to do any Folding. I got home very late last night and spent only 10 minutes on my PC. Then I brushed my teeth and hit they hay. We'll see about tonight.

If you Fold on ATI, please read this post. This will apply until fahcore_16 comes out for ATI. That post is from August, 09, but I see posts going back to March of 09 about them.

Folding@home

A blog all about Folding@home, from its Director, Prof. Vijay Pande
http://folding.stanford.edu
(c) 2007 Vijay Pande



March 31, 2011

Core 16 for ATI released; also note on NVIDIA GPU support for older boards

In a previous post, I mentioned our plans for supporting ATI GPUs. I'm happy to announce that with the release of v7 into open beta, we have now released ATI core 16 GPU3 WUs into advanced methods for Folding@home. Please see Dr. Lin's forum post for details.
We are doing a gradual rollout of these WUs, for a couple of reasons. First, while this has gone through beta testing, it is still pretty new, so we want to be cautious with its rollout. Second, I would like to add some more servers to help the load. These servers are being delivered today and will likley be on line in a week or two. Depending on the load on the ATI core 16 Work server, we may wait for a full release until the new hardware is on line.
Just a reminder from the previous post that there are some limitations in our ability to support ATI boards. In particular, we're limited to those which support OpenCL 1.1 in order to get any sort of reasonable performance out of the hardware. This means that only 5xxx ATI GPU boards or later will work with the new core 16 (the series 3xxx are not supported and the series 4xxx does not have sufficient OpenCL support). However, we will keep core 11 support going hopefully at least until Sept 1, 2011 in order to support the older hardware.
Also, we are looking at support of older NVIDIA GPUs as well. In particular, there have been reported issues with some 8xxx series boards. We may have to limit their support as well due to analogous hardware compatibility issues.
We're excited to be able to release OpenCL support for ATI GPUs. However, I want to stress that it is still pretty early days for this code, but we're excited about where this is going.

I reconfigured the GPU slot with 'client-type' = 'advanced' and got a core 16 WU. That was a couple of minutes ago. I'll let you know how it goes.

Edit: Forgot to install an up to date Catalyst. I have 10.9. I do have the latest OpenCL SDK installed though. So far F@H seems to work fine, but I'll update to a new driver anyway.

Any one get the v7 to run smp and gpu2 yet? I couldn't get it to work for me. SMP was fine but I couldn't get the gpu slots to go.

With the new GPU client I'm getting an estimated points per day of 4327.55. That's an estimate before even one WU has finished (updating the driver broke my previous WU). It's about twice what I got with the previous GPU client, so it's a good improvement. I hoped it would be even faster, but it's early days for this client so hopefully it will become even faster in the future.

Blacksmith1, what was the problem? I added a GPU slot, in the extra options I added 'client-type' = 'advanced', and it worked.

this time I stated with the GPU client as prefered and added the smp. it worked. i think I have the advmethods switch in the right place??? I guess i'll find out. but i need to finish my current SMP WU before making the switch.

Folding@home

A blog all about Folding@home, from its Director, Prof. Vijay Pande
http://folding.stanford.edu
(c) 2007 Vijay Pande



April 05, 2011

Change to the stats system

There are some changes to the stats system which are needed for consistency between the web site stats (eg http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/...type=userstats) and the flat files (eg http://fah-web.stanford.edu/daily_user_summary.txt.bz2). The main issue is how we handle passkeys and their impact on donor rankings. I want to stress that this will not change point values or anything other than how we list the ordering of donors in our ranking.
Passkeys are a relatively recent addition to Folding@home. The passkey, a new feature beginning with the v6.0 FAH client, is a unique identifier that ties your contributions directly to you (not just those with your donorname). The use of a passkey prevents others from cheating using your name.
In order to have the stats flat files match the web site in terms of donor ranking, we need to change both the flat files and the web site. The issue is how we handle passkeys. The web site ignores accounts with passkeys right now (needed to do a fast SQL count(*)), whereas the flat files aggregates all passkey accounts into the same donor name and then orders by the aggregate points for that donorname.

Our proposal to fix this is to treat each donorname+passkey combo as a unique donor in terms of ranking in the flat files and web site. This would let the two be consistent. We've batted around alternatives and nothing else would fit the goals of being fast for the web site and consistent between the two. We will not of course give out the passkey in the file, although we are planning on distinguishing passkeys by revealing the last 2 digits. This should be enough to identify different accounts without giving away any critical information.

In the next few days, we will release flat files with the additional donorname + passkey info. After May 1, we will transition the FAH web stats to use the same method. This lag between the two is intended to give 3rd party stats a chance to update their scripts, if they choose.
I want to stress that 3rd party stats could choose to aggregate in the old way or the new way. We are making this change mainly so that the stats we present are consistent.

Folding@home

A blog all about Folding@home, from its Director, Prof. Vijay Pande
http://folding.stanford.edu
(c) 2007 Vijay PandeApril 05, 2011

More transparency in testing

For 10 years, we have rolled out Folding@home work units (WUs), Cores, and client software using a Quality Assurance (QA) protocol that involves several steps, including internal testing (int), closed beta testing (bet), open beta testing (adv), and full release (fah). The goal of this gradual rollout is to try to keep problematic WUs and software from getting released and to allow donors to have some choice in terms of how bleeding edge they’d like to be.

However, this does mean that a great deal of work is done in closed testing, which has several disadvantages. First and foremost, all the work that beta testers, Forum Moderators, and the Pande Group does to QA WUs is never seen. This also means the rationale for releasing WUs in their current form is not broadly visible. And while entry to the team of donors working on closed beta testing was always available, that is a large bar to cross just to see what's going on. On the other hand, there are many upsides to closed testing however, including having a tight knit group of knowledgable donors giving useful feedback for strong QA of WUs.

While there are pros and cons of closed testing, I've decided that it is a good time to push for much more transparency in Folding@home in general, including closed beta testing. So, from now on, closed beta testing (bet) forum will be open for all to see. However, in order to keep strong QA, only beta team members can write in this forum (but as always, membership is open to those who are interested and dedicated to testing WUs).

My hope is that this will show all of the hard work that is done in testing WUs and will help answer questions about specific WUs that often come up. Also in this spirit, we have opened our v7 client bug tracker for read-only access so donors can see our progress with client development.

There's a tremendous amount of activity that goes on behind the scenes and I'm excited to open that up so the hard work that's been going on for a decade can now be much more visible (and hopefully better understood and appreciated).

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Originally Posted by ET3D

I reconfigured the GPU slot with 'client-type' = 'advanced' and got a core 16 WU. That was a couple of minutes ago. I'll let you know how it goes.

Edit: Forgot to install an up to date Catalyst. I have 10.9. I do have the latest OpenCL SDK installed though. So far F@H seems to work fine, but I'll update to a new driver anyway.

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How exactly did you reconfigure it for advance methods. I am trying to figure it out. It was easy for me to do this before on the old console version, but on version 7, I'm not sure. Did you go to configure, then click the slots tab, then edit the gpu, and then under extra slot options(expert) add your 'client-type' = 'advanced' . If so, did you have those apostrophes in there or not?

I haven't got any 16 WU yet, only 0x11.

At least I can fold with my 6850, wasn't able to get it to fold prior to installing V7. I have all the opencl drivers and I am running the latest catalyst 11.4(preview).

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Originally Posted by Cirozorro

How exactly did you reconfigure it for advance methods. I am trying to figure it out. It was easy for me to do this before on the old console version, but on version 7, I'm not sure. Did you go to configure, then click the slots tab, then edit the gpu, and then under extra slot options(expert) add your 'client-type' = 'advanced' . If so, did you have those apostrophes in there or not?

I haven't got any 16 WU yet, only 0x11.

At least I can fold with my 6850, wasn't able to get it to fold prior to installing V7. I have all the opencl drivers and I am running the latest catalyst 11.4(preview).

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http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=18187

Leganfuh, I have a question regarding the current contest going on right now. How is anyone supposed to reach no.1 on the folding chart if you're half a million PPD? Kind of seems unfair to offer a gtx 590 if nobody can even come close to beating you...

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Originally Posted by D0M1N4T0R

Leganfuh, I have a question regarding the current contest going on right now. How is anyone supposed to reach no.1 on the folding chart if you're half a million PPD? Kind of seems unfair to offer a gtx 590 if nobody can even come close to beating you...

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All you have to do is add more systems to the one's you have.

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Originally Posted by D0M1N4T0R

How is anyone supposed to reach no.1 on the folding chart if you're half a million PPD?

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he was at zero when the contest started. and there is always runner-up this month, and/or next months contest...