TPU's F@H Team

[SirKeldon]

I've returned to fold regarding this CoVID-19 world crysis and maybe a lot of former crunchers/folders as well, not to mention I've seen some webpages encouraging people to help with their computers at F@H to this situation which I've also found terrific ... so maybe that's the thing that we get no WU's and issues with stats page, maybe the system was not prepared for this mass folding effort and no WU's were prepared/deployed.
I plugged my client yesterday night and obtained 1 WU, today i'm 1h away to complete my 2nd one, so that makes 3 in 24h, not that much I guess, anyway, keep it on folders!!!

PS: Not to mention I've encouraged all my friends that I know that they game and have powerful GPU's to contribute to F@H project!!!

 

[phill]

@phill I haven't gotten new WU in 24 hours. I don't mind, but my folding PC does contribute to warming my apartment. Small sacrifice on my part.

I've not had mine on today, not been very sunny so would be a waste of time.. That said I need to get the second card plugged in and working It amazing to think that all the shortages are because of the virus going around.... It's kind of ironic in some ways that not all these same people who have started now never thought to do the cancer side of things... Strange...

I currently have 6 GPUs sitting idle, and very rarely 1 will get something.

It's a shame we have all this GPU power and we are not doing a lot with it

 

[windwhirl]

It's kind of ironic in some ways that not all these same people who have started now never thought to do the cancer side of things... Strange...

Probably because FAH wasn't exactly "advertised" a lot before. For example, I learned of its existence because there is a subforum about it here on TPU and got curious about it. And if someone told me before that that people lent computing power to organizations in exchange of nothing else other than points for a friendly competition of sorts, I wouldn't have believed it.

But now that even Nvidia went and asked people to put their GPUs to work on this... well FAH it's sort of everywhere now... An overwhemingly positive response, which is more than welcome.

It's a shame we have all this GPU power and we are not doing a lot with it

Indeed.

 

[phill]

At least it's a good thing, it's just a shame that Nvidia has said that use your GPUs but there's not enough Work Units to go around for all of the GPUs! Shame but at least it's been shown as a positive thing now

 

[mstenholm]

Just a heads up for those using client-type beta. I got some that keeps failing. In the end it will stop your folding unless you stop/start FAHClient and make sure that you have removed the beta option.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

I asked bruce at F@H if they had a way to show or tell us what has happened with the number of users at F@H. He pointed me to this: https://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=32124&p=314550#p314550 which doesn't help all that much, for me anyway. I've asked EOC if they can chart it....

 

[NastyHabits]

@thebluebumblebee From the link in your post above, while there are not listings of growth day by day, it does confirm that it's not a lack of WUs, but an explosion of users causing long delays .

"Run out of WU's - no. Reached max capacity to respond to provide WU's to the greatly increased donor base - Yes.

Discussions are ongoing with potential providers of expanded server capacity, and some is already in the process of being placed online. For example two servers are in the process of being configured on instances provided by Azure and can be seen listed on the server status page - https://apps.foldingathome.org/serverstats.

Announcements and FAQ's are in the process of being readied to post. "

 

[Arjai]

i got a job! 4 hours ago. I got home from work, saw that I was still not on the Pie page and opened up the client to see it working! Nice! I hope they can get enough servers online to keep us busy!

 

[NastyHabits]

Just got my third one in a row. I do hope it's because they got more servers, not because people dropped out.

I just looked in EOC and 52,789 people contributed work today!

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Just got my third one in a row. I do hope it's because they got more servers, not because people dropped out.

I just looked in EOC and 52,789 people contributed work today!

Where do you see that? I spent a bunch of time on there the other day looking for exactly that.

 

[mstenholm]

Where do you see that? I spent a bunch of time on there the other day looking for exactly that.

Now EOC just turned the leave for a new day but if you sort by points today and work your self down to when you reach zero, wouldn't that work?

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Now EOC just turned the leave for a new day but if you sort by points today and work your self down to when you reach zero, wouldn't that work?

I sure hope it’s easier than that. Seems like it is, seems like I’ve even asked this before.

 

[NastyHabits]

Where do you see that? I spent a bunch of time on there the other day looking for exactly that.

Now EOC just turned the leave for a new day but if you sort by points today and work your self down to when you reach zero, wouldn't that work?

@thebluebumblebee @phill That's exactly how I did it. Took a looooong time.

 

[mstenholm]

@thebluebumblebee @phill That's exactly how I did it. Took a looooong time.

Not that long but isn't a one click operation. BTW after three updates (9 hours) 22889 did GPU fold and 32699 folded in total. That is a lot of CPU folders!

 

[hat]

So here's a question... if CPU folding is "not worth it" (seemingly evidenced by the wide gap in PPD between CPUs and GPUs), then why do CPU work units still exist? Perhaps there's work that GPUs can't do, so they go to the CPU instead? I've said recently that I wouldn't really want to run WCG on a machine I have FAH installed on, since I can just as easily add a CPU slot to FAH instead... but then that means that machine isn't running WCG, so then I'm not doing that work, just folding. So, I'm not sure which way is truly the better way to go...

 

[mstenholm]

So here's a question... if CPU folding is "not worth it" (seemingly evidenced by the wide gap in PPD between CPUs and GPUs), then why do CPU work units still exist? Perhaps there's work that GPUs can't do, so they go to the CPU instead? I've said recently that I wouldn't really want to run WCG on a machine I have FAH installed on, since I can just as easily add a CPU slot to FAH instead... but then that means that machine isn't running WCG, so then I'm not doing that work, just folding. So, I'm not sure which way is truly the better way to go...

Well Stanford researchers think that it is worth it. There are no double precision GPU jobs (to few GPUs around for that job is my guess) so CPU still serve a purpose. The general recommendation from TPU(members) has been to fold with GPU and do WCG on the CPU but it is not based on a qualified scientifically ground. As for why the QRB (Quick Return Bonus) that give the GPU a points advantage for GPU and not CPU, your guess is as good as mine...in the olden days we had some big CPU job (for the time) that prompted some to invest in the high"er" end CPUs. Points were good for these job.

 

[hat]

Ah yes, I remember users talking about overclocking the i7 920 to complete those units in time. I believe 8 threads was the minimum requirement, so that chip was the popular one to have. At the time I probably had a dual core AMD Phenom or something, so I missed that boat.

I'm afraid that we might be missing something critical with so many of us doing GPU work units only, and only running WCG on the CPU instead. Even though the points for doing CPU work units aren't good, there might be something important there that gets overlooked. Perhaps I will be the outlier and not follow that recommendation.

 

[mstenholm]

Ah yes, I remember users talking about overclocking the i7 920 to complete those units in time. I believe 8 threads was the minimum requirement, so that chip was the popular one to have. At the time I probably had a dual core AMD Phenom or something, so I missed that boat.

I'm afraid that we might be missing something critical with so many of us doing GPU work units only, and only running WCG on the CPU instead. Even though the points for doing CPU work units aren't good, there might be something important there that gets overlooked. Perhaps I will be the outlier and not follow that recommendation.

I can assure you that if they wanted more to do CPU they would up the points....don't worry to much.

 

[phill]

@thebluebumblebee @phill That's exactly how I did it. Took a looooong time.

Not sure of the URL for the stats of everyone, but you can certainly tell that TPU is massively busier than normal with everyone contributing to FAH I'm not sure if they are doing all projects or just Corono but... I couldn't select it in my list when I was trying to get work for my two cards this morning...

 

[windwhirl]

I'm not sure if they are doing all projects or just Corono

I have it set to grab whatever it can find. It's hard enough to get a WU, I'm not gonna be picky about it

Though I've only been getting WUs for Coronavirus (at least whenever I bothered to check)

 

[phill]

I've not bothered checking (my blondness is helping here) but whatever comes down isn't thick and fast like normal.. This virus certainly has got people panicking

 

[roast]

I'm back folding a wee bit after a (5+ year??) hiatus, but I've been checking in on the TPU team from time to time. Glad to see you guys and gals are still fighting the good fight.

 

[biffzinker]

Added a Geforce GT 730, it's a single slot low profile card. Only other card I can fit between the RTX 2060, and soundcard.

 

[hat]

Good luck with that. I tried with a GT720 long ago, and most of the time it wouldn't even complete work units.

 

[biffzinker]

Good luck with that. I tried with a GT720 long ago, and most of the time it wouldn't even complete work units.

I gave up last night, and pulled it out. It was trying to get a WU but nothing was being crunched. When I did add the card in without changing F@H settings though it was defaulting to crunching on the GT730 ignoring the RTX2060. Redid the client then noticed WUs going to the RTX2060.

Edit: Pulled the EVGA Nu Audio card out to make room for a Radeon RX 560D. Hopefully I can get Folding@Home to use both cards.