Messages from Prof. Vijay Pande

[Leganfuh]

Folding@home
A blog all about Folding@home, from its Director, Prof. Vijay Pande
Folding@home - Main
(c) 2007 Vijay Pande

March 18, 2011

WS Down: VSP07*, VSP17, VSP22

There is one physical box down, which means that several WS virtual interfaces are down. Our sysadmins are working on it and have given us a 6 hour ETA for it coming back up.


Posted at 10:38 AM |

UPDATE 8pm pacific time Fri Mar 18: The server is still going through its RAID arrays (it has many of them and they are very large). Our admins think this will require several more hours, putting the ETA at Saturday assuming all goes well.


UPDATE 5:30am pacific time Sat Mar 19: The server came up an hour ago and looks to be running ok now

[Leganfuh]

Folding@home

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

March 29, 2011

Planned server outage: tomorrow, Wed Mar 30 from 10am to noon pacific time

We have a planned outage tomorrow, Wednesday March 30 from 10am to noon pacific time. The stats update and fah-web.stanford.edu web pages will be down, but FAH will be running otherwise. Stats will still be accumulated by the Work Servers, just not related to the web page until those servers go up.
So, other than seeing stats updates, everything should look normal for FAH during the outage.


Posted at 09:39 AM | Permalink


Client version 7 now in open beta

I am happy to announce that after many months of development and testing the new version 7 Folding@home client software is now available for open-beta testing. The V7 client is a complete rewrite of the previous client for Windows, OS-X and Linux with the following goals:

1. To make the installation and startup user-friendly for the novice.
2. To integrate the user interface into a single Monitor/Control program that manages the functionality previously contained in separate clients.
3. To create a forward-looking design that can be readily expanded to incorporate new Folding Cores without the need to issue new client releases.
4. To greatly improve previously problematic aspects including support for SMP, GPU, and the 3D viewer.

Getting Started
Please consider reading one of the guides listed in the documentation section, but if you want to dive right in you can start by downloading and installing the new client.



Documentation
Install and user guides can be found here:

https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/FAHClient/
There are also some additional quick start FAQ items here
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=18043

Features
The new client has too many features to list but here are some of the highlights:

• Improved Windows installer with support for Windows XP, Vista, 2008 and Windows 7.
• 64-bit OS-X install package. (32-bit in the works).
• Debian/Ubuntu and RedHat/Fedora/CentOS 32-bit and 64-bit Linux packages.
• Low priority background operation has very little impact on your computers usability. You should hardly notice Folding@home is running when using other applications.
• A more compatible and stable 3D protein viewer with several view modes, rotation, zoom, online help and interpolated protein animations.
• Separate but integrated console client (FAHClient), user interface (FAHControl) and 3D protein viewer (FAHViewer).
• Novice, Advanced & Expert user interface modes. (See drop down list in FAHControl.)
• Support for more than one Folding Slot (UNI, SMP or GPU).
• Ability to monitor, configure and control many remote folding clients from a single computer.
• Very low CPU overhead for FAHClient, FAHControl and FAHViewer. 3D viewer overhead can be minimized by disabling rotating and protein animation.
• Single client for normal (Uniprocessor), SMP (Multiple CPUs) and GPU (Graphics Processors) folding.

Bugs/Tickets
The V7 client has undergone months of testing but due to the complex nature of distributed computing, the many features provided by the Folding@home client and the difficulties of simultaneously supporting software on Windows, OS-X and Linux there are still some open bugs, feature requests and likely other as of yet undiscovered issues. The beta testing process will help us test new features and fix any remaining bugs before we make a full public release. That said the open-beta V7 client is very usable and has many advantages over the previous client releases.

In an effort to increase the transparency of our development process we have decided to open read-only access to our bug tracking system. We are currently using Trac, a Web based system which, among other things, manages a database of tickets. Each ticket represents either a bug or feature request of some component of the Folding@home client software. You can view the list of open tickets here:

v7 Client, Open Tickets Ordered by Milestone and Priority

Getting Help
Aside from the documentation the best place to get help is in a v7 client forum (http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=67). If you do have a problem post a message. There are many knowledgeable people ready and willing to help you but keep in mind we greatly appreciate thorough reports delivered by patient people who can keep a cool head even when things go wrong.
Final Notes
We are very excited to see this software make its way around the world improving and expanding Folding@home and thereby increasing our understanding of how proteins fold and ultimately helping to find cures for some of our societies scariest diseases. We greatly appreciate your participation and understand that without your generous contributions of time and computing resources there would be no Folding@home.

So dive right in and let us know about your experience.
PS You can find more information at this forum thread
http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.ph...=18034&start=0

[Blacksmith1]

Yay!!! the V7 is almost done. don't know if I want to try it yet but i'm thinking about it. gotta see about transfering my current WU's to it so i don't lose the work on my SMP.

[slugbug]

Finally GPU support with Ubuntu working for anyone who uses Linux. ATI folding apparently works too. Anyone with an ATI card care to try this?

[Blacksmith1]

I can't get this thing to take my GPU clients... it's running (I think) the SMP from 0%, but when I try to add the GPU "slots" it saves them and won't run them????
ok it's not saving them. So much for the new client being easy to use. I'm following the instructions, and it's not doing what it's supposed to.

[James86]

It only supports 5k or newer on the ATI side and I have a 4850 so no go for me maybe Rob or Zac can post some #

[Leganfuh]

Folding@home

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

March 30, 2011

Planned server outage: today until noon pacific time

We took down the servers a little early (they are down now, 9:25am pacific time). Hopefully the service will be fast and they'll be back up early.
The main loss of function to FAH is the fah-web.stanford.edu web site is down.

[Rob]

It only supports 5k or newer on the ATI side and I have a 4850 so no go for me maybe Rob or Zac can post some #

I should be able to test it out soon. I always forget to leave my PC on at night to do some Folding. I'll try to remember to do it tonight.

[James86]

hopefully you can churn out some good #'s

[Rob]

hopefully you can churn out some good #'s

We'll see. If they've retooled the way F@H interacts with AMD cards, we could see quite an improvement. From what I've read that's going to take considerable effort on the part of F@H due to the way AMD changed their API. (I think API is the right word.) From my limited experiences with F@H and my 6950, work unit-crunching was pretty darn slow.

[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

[ET3D]

Just installed the beta client, running with my (underclocked) 5850, and WU time estimate is around 10 hours, which isn't much different than before (a little slower, but it's just an estimate, and dropping faster than real time). Of course, the WU itself may be different. I'll let you know when there are some real results.

I do see a difference in that when I run AMD System Monitor I see that the GPU is at 98-99% utilisation, and before that it was lower (don't remember exactly, but I think in the 70-80%).

[Leganfuh]

Folding@home

A blog all about Folding@home, from its Director, Prof. Vijay Pande
http://folding.stanford.edu
(c) 2007 Vijay Pande March 30, 2011

Server updates completed, back on line

fah-web.stanford.edu and the stats updates are back on line.

[James86]

Just installed the beta client, running with my (underclocked) 5850, and WU time estimate is around 10 hours, which isn't much different than before (a little slower, but it's just an estimate, and dropping faster than real time). Of course, the WU itself may be different. I'll let you know when there are some real results.

I do see a difference in that when I run AMD System Monitor I see that the GPU is at 98-99% utilisation, and before that it was lower (don't remember exactly, but I think in the 70-80%).

that's good to know now lets see if your ppd increases

[thebluebumblebee]

It only supports 5k or newer on the ATI side and I have a 4850 so no go for me maybe Rob or Zac can post some #

Pre 5xxx series support is not supposed to end until September. It will just run GPU2, so EV's will be needed.

GPU Slot Requirements
Windows XP or newer
1 or more supported GPU video cards
ATI/AMD
(GPU2 - fahcore_11)
2xxx series or newer
10.x AMD device driver or newer
(GPU3 - OpenCL - fahcore_16)
OpenCL compatible GPU, 5xxx series or newer
11.x AMD device driver or newer